pportunities 

Aviaiion 


OPPORTUNITIES   IN 
AVIATION 


OPPORTUNITY  BOOKS 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 
Br  LIEUT.  GORDON  LAMONT 
CAPTAIN  ARTHUK  SWEETSER 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  THE  NEWSPAPER  BUSINESS 
Br  JAMES  MELVIN  LEE 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  CHEMISTRY 
BY  ELLWOOD  HENDRICK 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 
BY  EDWARD  OWEN  DEAN 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  MERCHANT  SHIPS 
BY  NELSON  COLLINS 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 
ESTABLISHED  1817 


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OPPORTUNITIES 
IN  AVIATION 

By  Captain  ARTHUR  SWEETSER 
U.  S.  Air  Service  «  "8?  "»• 

Author  of   "The  American  Air  Service"    and 

GORDON  LAMONT,  Late  Lieutenant 
in   the    Royal  Air   Force,    Canada 

Frontispiece 


HARPER  &   BROTHERS 

Publishers  New  York  and  London 


Acknowledgement  is  made  to  the  New  York 

Evening  Post  for  some  of  the  material 

which  first  appeared  in  its  columns. 


OPPORTUNITIES  m  AVIATION 

Copyright,   igao,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published,  January,  1920 


To  that  great  new  gift  which  is  so  soon 
to  come  to  us,  this  little  book  is  en* 
thusiastically  dedicated  by  the  authors. 


435.175 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION     

i 

I. 

WAR'S  CONQUEST   OF  THE   AIR          .       ,       .  /     . 

I 

II. 

THE   TRANSITION   TO   PEACE         

II 

III. 

TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT       .... 

24 

IV. 

SAFETY  IN  FLYING     , 

39 

V. 

QUALIFICATIONS  OF  AN  AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

52 

VI. 

THE   FIRST  CROSSING   OF  THE  ATLANTIC    ... 

63 

VII. 

LANDING-FIELDS  —  THE    IMMEDIATE    NEED    . 

76 

VIII. 

THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER  

85 

IX. 

THE   CALL   OF  THE   SKIES      

96 

ADDENDUM 107 


INTRODUCTION 

ANY  ordinary,  active  man,  provided  he 
has  reasonably  good  eyesight  and  nerve, 
can  fly,  and  fly  well.  If  he  has  nerve  enough 
to  drive  an  automobile  through  the  streets 
of  a  large  city,  and  perhaps  argue  with  a 
policeman  on  the  question  of  speed  limits, 
he  can  take  himself  off  the  ground  in  an 
airplane,  and  also  land — a  thing  vastly  more 
difficult  and  dangerous.  We  hear  a  great 
deal  about  special  tests  for  the  flier — vacuum- 
chambers,  spinning-chairs,  co-ordination  tests 
— there  need  be  none  of  these.  The  average 
man  in  the  street,  the  clerk,  the  la.borer,  the 
mechanic,  the  salesman,  with  proper  train- 
ing and  interest  can  be  made  good,  if  not 
highly  proficient  pilots.  If  there  may  be 
one  deduction  drawn  from  the  experience  of 
instructors  in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  it  is  that 
it  is  the  training,  not  the  individual,  that 
makes  the  pilot. 

Education  is  not  the  prune  requisite. 
Good  common  sense  and  judgment  are  much 
more  valuable.  Above  all,  a  sense  of  touch, 


INTRODUCTION 

such  as  a  man  can  acquire  playing  the  piano, 
swinging  a  pick,  riding  a  bicycle,  driving  an 
automobile,  or  playing  tennis,  is  important. 
A  man  should  not  be  too  sensitive  to  loss  of 
balance,  nor  should  he  be  lacking  in  a  sense 
of  balance.  There  are  people  who  cannot 
sail  a  sail-boat  or  ride  a  bicycle — these  peo- 
ple have  no  place  in  the  air.  But  ninety- 
nine  out  of  one  hundred  men,  the  ordinary 
normal  men,  can  learn  to  fly.  This  has  been 
the  experience  of  the  Royal  Air  Force  in 
Canada. 

There  will  be  as  much  difference  between 
the  civilian  pilot,  the  man  who  owns  an  air- 
plane of  the  future  and  drives  it  himself, 
and  the  army  flier,  as  there  is  now  between 
the  man  who  drives  his  car  on  Sunday  after- 
noons over  country  roads  and  the  racing  driver 
who  is  striving  for  new  records  on  specially 
built  tracks.  If  aeronautics  is  to  be  made 
popular,  every  one  must  be  able  to  take  part 
in  it.  It  must  cease  to  be  a  highly  special- 
ized business.  It  must  be  put  on  a  basis 
where  the  ordinary  person  can  snap  the  flying 
wires  of  a  machine,  listen  to  their  twang,  and 
know  them  to  be  true,  just  as  any  one  now 
thumps  his  rear  tire  to  see  whether  it  is  prop- 
erly inflated. 

The  book,  in  a  large  sense  a  labor  of  love, 


INTRODUCTION 

is  the  collaboration  of  an  American  officer 
of  the  United  States  Air  Service  and  another 
American,  a  flying-officer  in  the  Royal  Air 
Force.  If  the  Royal  Air  Force  way  of  doing 
things  seems  to  crowd  itself  to  the  fore  in 
the  discussion  of  the  training  of  pilots,  the 
authors  crave  indulgence. 

In  a  subject  which  lends  itself  dangerously 
to  imagination,  the  authors  have  endeavored 
to  base  what  they  have  written,  not  on 
prophecy,  but  on  actual  accomplishments  to 
date.  The  latter  are  indeed  so  solid  that 
there  is  no  necessity  for  guesswork.  Avia- 
tion has  proved  itself  beyond  peradventure 
to  those  who  have  followed  it,  but  up  to  the 
present  the  general  public  has  not  sufficiently 
analyzed  its  demonstrated  possibilities. 

The  era  of  the  air  is  undoubtedly  at  hand; 
it  now  remains  to  take  the  steps  necessary 
to  reap  full  advantages  from  it. 

ARTHUR  SWEETSER, 
GORDON  LAMONT. 


OPPORTUNITIES   IN 
AVIATION 


OPPORTUNITIES    IN 
AVIATION 

i 

WAR'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  AIR 

THE  WORLD  WAR  opened  to  man  the 
freedom  of  the  skies.  Amid  all  its 
anguish  and  suffering  has  come  forth  the 
conquest  of  the  air.  Scientists,  manufact- 
urers, dreamers,  and  the  most  hard-headed 
of  men  have  united  under  the  goad  of  its 
necessity  to  sweep  away  in  a  series  of  supreme 
efforts  all  the  fears  and  doubts  which  had 
chained  men  to  earth. 

True,  years  before,  in  fact,  nearly  a  decade 
before,  the  Wright  brothers  had  risen  from 
the  ground  and  flown  about  through  the  air 
in  a  machine  which  defied  conventional  rules 
and  beliefs.  The  world  had  looked  on  in 
wonder,  and  then  dropped  back  into  an 

apathetic  acceptance  of  the  fact.    Despite 
1 


OPPORTUNITIES   IN  AVIATION 

the  actual  demonstration  and  the  field  of 
imagination  which  was  opened  up,  these 
early  flights  proved  to  be  a  world's  wonder 
only  for  a  moment. 

For  years  aviation  dragged  on.  Dare- 
devils and  adventurers  took  it  up  to  make 
money  by  hair-raising  exploits  at  various 
meets  and  exhibits.  Many  died,  and  the 
general  public,  after  satiating  its  lust  for  the 
sensational,  turned  its  thought  elsewhere. 
Flight  was  regarded  as  somewhat  the  play- 
thing of  those  who  cared  not  for  life,  and  as 
a  result  the  serious,  sober  thought  of  the 
community  did  not  enter  into  its  solution. 

Business  men  held  aloof.  Apart  from  cir- 
cus performances  there  seemed  no  money  to 
be  made  in  aviation  and  consequently  prac- 
tically none  was  invested  in  it.  What  little 
manufacturing  was  done  was  by  zealots  and 
inventors.  Workmanship  was  entirely  by 
hand,  slow,  amateurish,  and  unreliable. 

Strangely  enough,  scientists  were  equally 
apathetic.  It  might  have  been  expected 
that  their  imaginations  would  be  fired  by  the 
unexplored  realms  of  the  air  and  by  the  in- 
comparably new  field  of  experiment  opened 
to  them;  but  they  were  not.  The  great 
question,  that  of  flight  itself,  had  been 

answered,  and  but  few  were  interested  in 
2 


WAR'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  AIR 

working  out  the  less  spectacular  applications 
of  its  principles.  Aviation  remained  very 
much  of  a  poor  sister  in  the  scientific  world, 
held  back  by  all  the  discredit  attaching  to  the 
early  stunt-flying  and  by  failure  to  break 
through  the  ancient  belief  in  its  impractica- 
bility for  any  purposes  other  than  the 
sensational. 

So  the  science  limped  along,  unsupported 
by  either  public  interest  or  capital.  Now 
and  again  some  startling  feat  attracted  the 
world's  attention,  as  when  the  English  Chan- 
nel was  first  crossed  by  air  and  England  was 
made  to  realize  that  her  insularity  was  gone. 
For  a  moment  this  feat  held  public  interest, 
but  again  without  a  true  realization  of  its 
significance.  There  seemed  nothing  which 
would  drive  man  to  develop  the  gift  which 
had  been  put  within  his  reach. 

Up  to  that  fatal  moment  in  August,  1914, 
when  the  World  War  broke  out,  aviation  had 
made  but  little  progress.  All  nations  had 
what  passed  as  air  services,  but  they  were 
very  small  and  ill-equipped  and  were  re- 
garded with  doubt  and  suspicion  by  the 
military  leaders  of  the  various  countries. 
Compared  with  what  has  since  taken  place, 
the  experiments  previous  to  the  war  were 
only  the  most  rudimentary  beginnings. 

2  3 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

Then  came  the  war.  Man's  imagination 
was  aroused  to  a  feverish  desire  for  the  de- 
velopment of  any  device  for  causing  destruc- 
tion. Conventions,  usages,  and  prejudices 
were  laid  aside  and  every  possibility  of  in- 
flicting damage  on  the  enemy  was  examined 
on  its  merits.  Sentiment  or  any  regard  for 
personal  danger  involved  was  thrown  to  the 
winds.  Science  was  mobilized  in  all  lines 
in  the  struggle  to  keep  one  step  ahead  of  the 
enemy. 

Almost  immediately  aviation  challenged 
the  attention  of  the  responsible  leaders.  The 
handful  of  French  planes  which  in  those  early 
fateful  days  of  August  penetrated  up  into 
Belgium  brought  back  the  information  of  the 
German  mobilization  there,  and  this  led  to 
the  rearrangement  of  French  forces  in  prep- 
aration for  the  battle  of  the  Marne.  As  a 
result  aviation  at  once  leaped  into  high  repute 
for  scouting  purposes  and  the  foundations 
were  laid  for  its  great  development. 

But  as  aviation  had  proved  itself  in  the 
warfare  of  movement  leading  down  to  the 
Marne  and  sweeping  back  later  to  the  Aisne, 
so  it  proved  itself  in  the  French  warfare 
which  was  so  unexpectedly  to  follow.  When 
the  two  opposing  lines  were  so  close  together 

that  they  locked  almost  in  a  death  grip,  each 
4 


WAR'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  AIR 

side  kept  such  strict  watch  that  ground 
observation  was  greatly  hampered.  Appar- 
ently there  was  only  one  way  to  find  out 
what  was  going  on  behind  the  enemy's  lines. 
That  was  by  looking  from  above.  The  first 
aviator,  therefore,  who  sailed  into  the  air 
and  spied  the  enemy  introduced  one  of  the 
most  important  developments  in  the  strategy 
of  modern  warfare. 

Thereupon  began  one  of  those  silent  battles 
of  the  rear,  of  which  we  see  and  hear  so  little, 
but  which  indeed  decides  sometimes  far 
in  advance  of  the  actual  test  of  battle  just 
which  side  is  going  to  win.  Scientists,  in- 
ventors, manufacturers,  and  practical  fliers 
began  coming  together  in  increasing  numbers 
to  exact  from  this  latest  method  of  warfare 
its  last  degree  of  usefulness.  In  the  studies 
and  factories  on  both  sides  of  the  lines  men 
dedicated  themselves  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  flight. 

Stage  by  stage  the  difficulties  were  over- 
come. First  it  was  the  Germans  who  with 
their  terrible  Fokker  planes  harnessed  the 
machine-gun  to  the  airplane  and  made  of  it  a 
weapon  of  offense.  Then  it  was  the  Allies 
who  added  the  radio  and  made  of  it  an  effi- 
cient method  of  observation  and  spotting  of 
artillery  fire.  Increased  engine-power  began 
5 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

to  be  developed,  and  bombs  were  carried  in 
ever-increasing  numbers  and  size. 

The  moment  an  enemy  plane  fell  on  either 
side  of  the  line  the  victors  gathered  about 
their  prey  with  a  keenness  which  could  come 
only  of  the  hope  that  they  might  find  in  it 
some  suggestion  that  would  make  their  own 
flying  more  efficient.  Each  learned  from  the 
other,  so  that  the  different  schools  on  either 
side  of  the  line  had  all  the  advantage  of 
watching  the  development  of  their  rivals. 
Very  shortly  after  an  improvement  appeared 
on  one  side  it  reappeared  in  the  planes  of 
the  other  side. 

It  is  doubtful  if  ever  a  more  desperate 
scientific  battle  was  fought  than  that  which 
featured  the  development  of  the  air  services 
of  the  various  belligerents  during  the  war. 
Control  of  the  air  was  so  vital  that  neither 
could  afford  to  overlook  any  possibility;  and, 
as  a  result,  the  scientific  evolution  was 
truly  astounding.  No  man  was  reserved  on 
this  subject  of  airplane  improvement.  All 
contributed  their  best  skill  and  ability  to  the 
common  reservoir  of  knowledge. 

Very  soon  man's  conquest  of  the  air  be- 
came so  complete  that  different  types  of 
planes  were  developed  for  different  kinds  of 

work.    The  plane  of  the  early  days  which 
6 


WAR'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  AIR 

wandered  off  by  itself  wherever  it  saw  fit, 
gathered  what  information  it  could,  and 
returned  to  drop  a  note  to  the  commander 
below,  developed  into  a  highly  efficient  two- 
seated  plane  equipped  with  machine-guns 
for  protection  against  attack,  wireless  for 
sending  back  messages,  and  cameras  for 
photographing  the  enemy's  positions  below. 
The  plane  which  had  earlier  dropped  an 
occasional  bomb  in  a  hit-or-miss  fashion 
over  the  side  now  developed  either  into  a 
powerful  two-seater  with  a  great  weight- 
carrying  capacity  and  a  continually  more 
efficient  scientific  method  of  aiming  its  mis- 
siles or  into  a  huge  machine  for  long-distance 
night-bombing  work  capable  of  carrying 
from  two  to  a  dozen  men  and  from  two  to 
four  tons  of  bombs.  During  this  time  the 
strictly  fighting  plane,  usually  a  single- 
seater,  increased  in  speed,  "  ceiling,"  and 
agility  till  it  could  dart,  twist,  and  dive  about, 
three  to  five  miles  above  the  trenches,  pro- 
tecting friendly  bombing  and  observation 
planes  below  from  enemy  attack  or  swooping 
down  to  send  enemy  planes  in  flames  to  the 
ground. 

Vital  though  all  this  work  was  for  the  war, 
it  had  an  incomparably  greater  value  for  the 

perpetual   struggle   which   all   mankind   is 
7 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

waging  against  nature.  While  the  various 
nations  were  seeking  to  destroy  one  another 
through  the  air,  they  were  in  reality  destroy- 
ing the  chains  which  bound  them  to  the 
ground  and  winning  their  freedom  in  a  new 
element.  The  advance  which  the  Allies  or 
the  Germans  made  over  each  other  in  scien- 
tific aerial  development  was  a  joint  advance 
over  the  restrictions  of  gravitation. 

This,  indeed,  apart  from  the  spread  of 
democracy  and  internationalism,  may  well 
stand  out  in  history  as  the  war's  richest 
heritage.  Problems  which  had  been  con- 
sidered insoluble  were  solved.  The  casting 
aside  of  all  conventions,  all  restrictive  habits 
of  thought,  all  selfishnesses,  and  the  focusing 
of  the  highest  scientific  ability  in  a  struggle 
which  might  mean  the  life  or  death  of  the 
nation,  had  brought  as  a  by-product  a 
development  beyond  our  wildest  fancies. 

Aerial  operations  in  any  future  war,  how- 
ever, will  have  at  once  a  problem  which  has 
only  recently  and  in  very  much  smaller 
degree  confronted  the  navy,  namely,  the 
assurance  of  attack  not  only  on  the  front, 
in  the  rear,  and  on  both  flanks,  but  from 
above  and  below  as  well.  Recently  the  navy 
has  had  to  face  that  problem — submarines 

operating  below  and  airplanes  above;    but 
8 


WAR'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  AIR 

the  problem  of  attack  upon  a  ship  is  not  so 
serious  as  upon  an  airplane. 

Already,  in  order  to  meet  this  danger  of 
attack  from  every  possible  direction,  a  most 
complete  strategy  and  system  of  formations 
have  been  worked  out.  In  this  way  the 
various  types  of  planes  operate  in  different 
air  strata  according  to  their  missions,  the 
upper  planes  echelon  somewhat  behind 
those  below  on  the  order  of  a  flight  of  steps 
facing  the  enemy.  This  system  provides  a 
quick  method  of  reception  of  an  attack  and 
the  assurance  of  quick  support,  no  matter 
where  the  attack  may  come.  Obviously 
there  would  be  nothing  in  all  of  warfare  on 
either  land  or  sea  comparable  to  a  collision 
between  two  such  aerial  fleets.  The  speed 
of  the  lighter  planes,  quick,  life-taking  duels 
in  several  different  strata  at  once,  would  pro- 
vide a  clash  of  action,  speed,  and  skill  far 
more  beautiful  and  yet  in  many  ways  far 
more  terrible  than  anything  ever  recorded 
in  the  history  of  war. 

Fleets  of  the  skies — who  shall  attempt  at 
this  day  of  the  infancy  of  the  science  to  limit 
their  scope?  Aerial  battle-planes  of  colossal 
size  and  power  are  as  certain  to  come  in 
time,  and  in  not  a  very  long  time,  as  the 

dreadnought  of  to-day  was  certain  to  follow 
9 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATON 

the  first  armored  ship  of  only  a  half-century 
ago.  Never  yet  has  man  opened  up  a  new 
avenue  of  war  that  he  has  not  pursued  it 
relentlessly  .to  its  final  conclusion.  It  is 
certain  that  he  will  not  fail  to  push  aerial 
development  with  all  the  energy  with  which 
he  has  devoted  himself  to  the  science  of 
destruction. 

The  avenue  of  the  seas  has  been  up  to  now 
the  world's  greatest  civilizer.  Very  shortly, 
without  doubt,  it  will  be  replaced  by  the 
avenue  of  the  skies.  If  we  are  to  strive  for 
freedom  of  the  seas,  what  shall  we  say  about 
freedom  of  this  new  element?  The  laws  of 
aerial  travel  and  aerial  warfare  open  an 
unlimited  field  of  speculation. 


II 

THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

P\EVELOPMENTS  during  the  war,  de- 
*--'  spite  their  startling  sensational  char- 
acter, had,  however,  been  so  overshadowed 
by  human  suffering  and  desperation  that  but 
few  minds  were  awake  to  the  changes  that 
were  to  influence  man's  future.  Amid  the 
disasters,  battles,  and  unprecedented  move- 
ments in  the  politics  of  nations,  the  achieve- 
ments of  flight  could  command  but  a  passing 
notice.  People  looked  and  wondered,  but 
were  distracted  from  following  their  thoughts 
through  to  the  logical  conclusion  by  the 
roar  of  a  seventy-mile  gun,  the  collapse  of  a 
nation,  or  the  shock  of  battle  on  a  one-hun- 
dred-mile front. 

Let  us,  however,  weave  together  a  few 
things  that  were  done  in  those  days  of  sensa- 
tion, which  may  have  a  particular  effect  on 
the  future  of  the  science.  Most  conspicuous, 
perhaps,  was  the  obliteration  of  distance  and 

of  all  the  customary  limitations  of  travel, 
ll 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

German  airplanes  in  squadrons  penetrated 
into  snug  little  England  when  the  German 
fleet  stood  locked  in  its  harbor.  The  Italian 
poet  D'Annunzio  dropped  leaflets  over  Vienna 
when  his  armies  were  held  at  bay  at  the 
Alps.  French,  British,  and  finally  American 
planes  brought  the  war  home  to  cities  of  the 
Rhine  which  never  even  saw  the  Allied 
troops  till  Germany  had  surrendered. 

None  of  the  conventional  barriers  stood  in 
the  way  of  these  long  trips.  A  new  route  of 
travel  had  been  opened  up  along  which  men 
flew  at  will.  The  boundary-lines  of  states 
below,  which  look  so  formidable  on  the  map, 
were  passed  over  with  the  greatest  ease,  as 
well  as  such  natural  obstacles  as  the  Alps 
and  the  English  Channel. 

Tremendous  saving  in  time  was  constantly 
being  effected.  Men  were  able  to  dart  back 
and  forth  from  the  front  to  the  rear  and  from 
England  to  France  with  a  speed  never 
dreamed  of  by  other  means  of  travel.  To 
be  sure,  the  front-line  demands  for  planes 
were  too  severe  to  allow  a  very  wide  use  in 
this  way,  but  nevertheless  the  possibilities 
were  there  and  were  constantly  availed  of.1 

Indeed,   the   British   early   established   a 

1Some  of  the  British  statesmen  flew  to  and  from  the 
Peace  Conference  in  Paris. 

12 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

communication  squadron  for  this  specific 
purpose.  In  the  last  three  months  of  the 
war  279  cross-country  passenger  flights  were 
made  to  such  places  as  Paris,  Nancy,  Dun- 
kirk, and  Manchester,  all  of  them  without  a 
single  accident!  Moreover,  a  Channel  ferry 
service  was  created  which  in  seventy-one 
days  of  flying  weather  made  227  crossings, 
covered  over  8,000  miles,  and  carried  1,843 
passengers. 

With  trains  seldom  going  above  60  miles 
an  hour,  the  slowest  airplane  went  80  and 
the  average  daylight  plane  on  the  front 
probably  equaled  110.  The  fast  fighters 
went  up  to  120,  130,  and  even  140  miles  an 
hour,  over  twice  as  fast  as  any  method  of 
travel  previously  known.  Just  as  the  cur- 
tain closed  on  the  war,  there  had  been  de- 
veloped in  the  United  States  a  plane  credited 
with  162%  miles  an  hour,  and  no  one  for  a 
moment  believed  that  the  limit  had  been 
reached. 

Altitude  likewise  had  been  obliterated. 
The  customary  height  for  two-seated  ob- 
servation and  bombing  planes  was  between 
one  and  two  miles,  and  of  single-seated  scouts 
between  two  and  four  miles.  These  altitudes 
were  not  the  freakish  heights  occasionally 
obtained  by  adventurous  fliers;  on  the  con- 

13 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

trary  they  were  the  customary  levels  at 
which  the  different  kinds  of  duties  were 
carried  out.  Many  men,  of  course,  went 
far  higher.  Since  then  an  American,  Roland 
Rohlfs,  flying  a  Curtiss  "Wasp"  set  the  un- 
official altitude  record  at  34,610  feet  — higher 
than  the  world's  highest  mountain. 

Life  at  these  altitudes  was  not  possible,  of 
course,  under  ordinary  conditions.  The  tem- 
perature fell  far  below  zero  and  the  air  be- 
came so  thin  that  neither  man  nor  engine 
could  function  unaided.  As  a  result  the 
fliers  were  kept  from  freezing  by  electrically 
heated  clothing  and  from  unconsciousness 
from  lack  of  air  by  artificially  supplied  oxy- 
gen. Similarly  the  oil,  water,  and  gasolene 
of  the  engine  were  kept  working  by  special 
methods. 

The  armistice  threw  the  different  nations 
into  a  dilemma  as  to  their  aviation  plans. 
Obviously  the  huge  war  planes  which  were 
still  in  the  building  in  all  the  belligerent  coun- 
tries were  no  longer  necessary.  Almost  im- 
mediately, therefore,  the  placing  of  new  con- 
tracts was  halted  by  the  various  governments, 
enlistments  stopped,  and  plans  set  in  motion 
for  the  new  requirements. 

Within  a  very  short  time  the  United  States 
canceled  several  hundred  million  dollars' 

14 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

worth  of  contracts  on  which  little  actual 
expenditure  had  been  made  by  the  manu- 
facturers. Shipments  of  men  and  planes 
overseas  were  of  course  brought  to  an  end 
and  at  the  same  time  arrangements  were 
made  for  bringing  back  from  France  the  great 
aerial  equipment  mobilized  there.  Indeed, 
the  air  service  units  were  among  the  first 
to  be  returned,  especially  the  labor  and 
construction  troops  in  England. 

Nevertheless,  military  aviation  of  the  future 
was  definitely  safeguarded.  A  bill  was  pre- 
sented to  Congress  for  an  aerial  force  of 
4,000  officers  and  22,000  men,  a  fitting  con- 
trast to  the  force  of  65  officers  and  1,120  men 
with  which  the  country  had  entered  the  war. 
Certain  flying  fields  and  schools  which  had 
shown  the  greatest  value  in  the  past  and 
promised  most  for  the  future  were  definitely 
designated  for  permanent  use,  and  especial 
effort  was  made  to  keep  in  the  service  the 
best  of  the  technical  experts  and  designers 
who  had  helped  to  solve  America's  problems 
of  the  air. 

Abroad  demobilization  was  less  rapid, 
as  it  was  in  all  other  lines.  The  British, 
who  had  given  particular  thought  to  after- 
war  aviation,  immediately  turned  to  con- 
verting all  their  valuable  war  material  and 

15 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

experience  into  a  national  force  which  should 
assure  England  of  the  supremacy  of  the  air 
as  well  as  strength  in  her  supremacy  of  the 
seas.  France,  the  custodian  of  Germany's 
great  aerial  force,  found  more  than  enough 
work  for  all  her  men  in  taking  care  of  the 
hundreds  of  surrendered  machines.  Both 
nations  at  the  same  time  took  long  steps 
toward  building  up  the  civil  machinery 
necessary  for  private,  non-military  flying. 

For  several  months,  of  course,  there  was  a 
hiatus.  Thought  had  been  so  concentrated 
on  military  aviation  that  the  conversion  to 
peace  work  proved  slow.  Only  the  most 
general  plans  had  been  made  in  any  of  the 
countries,  and  those  by  ardent  supporters  of 
aviation,  who  were  forced  to  make  the  most 
earnest  efforts  to  obtain  consideration  of  the 
subject  in  the  midst  of  all  the  vital  problems 
of  peace  and  reconstruction.  Greatest  of 
all  the  difficulties  was  that,  as  private  flying 
had  been  prohibited  during  the  war,  there 
were,  with  the  coming  of  peace,  no  rules 
and  regulations  ready  for  it.  Also  many 
great  projects  for  international  flights  had 
to  be  postponed  because  of  complete  lack  of 
international  rules  in  this  respect. 

Nevertheless,  most  spectacular  and  con- 
vincing flights  followed  one  another  in  rapid 
16 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

succession.  The  most  outstanding  of  these 
flights  was,  of  course,  the  first  crossing  of  the 
Atlantic  by  seaplane — a  triumph  of  organized 
effort  by  the  navy.  At  the  same  time  all 
over  the  world  flights  took  place  with 
astounding  frequency  which  illustrated,  as 
little  else  could,  the  certain  future  of  aviation. 
Seas,  mountains,  deserts,  places  otherwise 
almost  impassable  were  traversed  with  ease 
and  speed. 

Army  fliers  flew  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific  within  a  few  months  of  the  signing  of 
the  armistice.  It  required  but  fifty  hours 
of  flying-time,  just  a  fraction  over  two  days. 
At  that  time  no  attempt  was  made  to  obtain 
speed,  as  the  purpose  of  the  trip  had  been 
to  locate  landing-fields  and  make  aerial  maps 
for  future  transcontinental  flights. 

The  four  pJanes  that  made  this  trip  might 
be  considered  as  the  pioneers  of  vast  flocks 
of  airplanes  which  within  a  short  time  will  be 
winging  their  way  from  coast  to  coast.  If, 
with  machines  built  specifically  for  war  pur- 
poses and  with  no  special  landing-fields  or 
routes  laid  out,  aviators  could  successfully 
travel  from  one  coast  to  the  other  in  fifty 
hours  of  flying-time,  how  much  more  rapidly 
will  future  trips  be  made  when  special  tour- 
ing-planes have  been  developed,  routes  and 
17 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

landing-fields  are  laid  out,  repair-shops  are 
built,  and  the  trip  becomes  a  matter  of  rou- 
tine rather  than  aerial  experiments. 

The  effect  that  this  new  method  of  travel 
will  have  on  American  life  and  development 
is  staggering  to  the  imagination.  San  Fran- 
cisco and  New  York  will  be  almost  neighbors, 
while  Chicago  and  New  Orleans  will  be  but 
a  pleasant  day's  trip  apart.  The  business 
man,  the  statesman,  and  even  the  courier 
can  be  transported  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other,  independent  of  steel 
rails  and  other  devices,  in  record  time. 

Such  experiments  have  already  proved 
successful  in  Europe.  The  British  Foreign 
Office  in  London,  anxious  to  keep  in  close 
touch  with  the  Peace  Conference  at  Paris, 
turned  to  the  airplane  to  assure  quick 
transportation  of  men  and  documents.  The 
slow  train  trip  with  the  irksome  transfer 
to  and  from  the  Channel  steamer  and  the 
more  irksome  voyage  across  the  Channel 
itself,  were  avoided  by  a  special  service 
through  the  air.  Thus  two  great  capitals 
were  brought  within  a  few  hours'  tune  of 
each  other,  which  greatly  facilitated  the 
vital  negotiations  under  way. 

Civilians  were  finally  granted  the  right  to 
make  the  trip  under  military  supervision. 

18 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

Fourteen  passengers  were  transported  from 
Paris  to  London  in  two  hours  and  forty 
minutes  as  against  six  hours  and  forty 
minutes,  the  fastest  time  ever  made  by  any 
other  means  of  travel.  Each  of  them  had 
twenty  pounds  of  luggage,  and  luncheon 
of  cold  ham  and  champagne  was  served  on 
board  over  the  Channel,  followed  by  a  game 
of  cards.  It  was  easily  demonstrate  by 
the  return  trip  that  men  could  leave  either 
capital  after  breakfast,  have  several  hours 
in  the  other,  and  return  home  for  dinner. 

Then  a  French  flier  with  six  passengers 
made  the  flight  from  Paris  to  Brussels.  The 
time  consumed  between  the  two  capitals 
was  but  two  hours  as  against  over  five  by 
the  ordinary  train  travel.  As  an  instance 
of  some  of  the  problems  which  this  particular 
flight  brought  about,  it  was  observed  that  a 
Belgian  policeman  approached  the  plane  as 
it  was  about  to  leave  and  inquired  for  pass- 
ports and  papers.  Everybody  made  excuses 
for  not  having  them.  The  policeman  refused 
to  allow  the  airplane  to  leave.  Finally  the 
pilot,  losing  his  patience  and  temper,  started 
the  motor  and  flew  off  before  the  angered 
official  knew  what  had  happened. 

Two  other  French  aviators  about  the  same 
time  crossed  the  Mediterranean  from  France 

3  19 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

to  Algiers  and  back  in  the  same  day.  Though 
unequipped  with  seaplane  devices,  they 
started  out  with  full  confidence  that  their 
motors  would  carry  them  over  the  water. 
With  only  their  navigating  instruments  and 
an  occasional  vessel  to  guide  them,  they 
reached  their  destination  after  a  perfect  trip 
and  created  a  great  sensation  among  the 
natives  who  came  down  to  see  the  airplanes 
alight. 

Far  more  spectacular,  however,  was  the 
flight  made  from  London  to  Delhi.  A 
Handley-Page  machine,  which  had  flown 
from  London  to  Cairo  during  the  war  and 
taken  part  in  the  final  military  opera- 
tions against  the  Turks,  left  Cairo,  on 
November  30th,  shortly  after  the  armistice. 
Five  and  three-quarter  hours  later  the  air- 
plane with  five  passengers  reached  Damascus, 
a  trip  practically  impossible  except  through 
the  air  because  of  the  ravages  of  the  war. 
At  7.40  the  next  morning  they  set  out  again, 
flew  northeast  along  the  Jebel  esh  Shekh 
Range  to  Palmyra,  then  east  to  the  Eu- 
phrates, down  that  river  to  Ramadi,  and 
thence  across  to  Bagdad,  a  flight  of  510 
miles  made  in  six  hours  and  fifty  minutes 
without  a  single  stop,  part  of  it  over 
country  untrod  even  by  the  most  primi- 

20 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

tive  travelers.  Thence  they  went  on  via 
Bushire,  Bander  Abbas,  Tcharbar,  and  Ka- 
rachi to  Delhi,  where  they  received  a  tre- 
mendous ovation  as  the  first  fliers  to  arrive 
from  the  home  country.  From  Delhi  they 
continued  on  without  mishap  to  Calcutta. 
This  distance  from  Cairo  to  Karachi,  2,548 
miles,  was  made  in  thirty-six  hours'  flying- 
time;  from  Karachi  to  Delhi  the  distance  is 
704  miles,  and  from  Delhi  to  Calcutta  300, 
a  total  of  4,052  miles  from  the  main  city  of 
Egypt  to  the  greatest  commercial  port  of 
India.  No  route  had  been  surveyed,  no 
landing-places  obtained,  no  facilities  pro- 
vided. Territory  inaccessible  to  ordinary 
travel,  land  where  the  white  man  is  almost 
a  stranger,  was  crossed.  Yet  it  was  all  done 
as  part  of  the  day's  work,  in  no  sense  as  a 
record-breaking  or  spectacular  trip. 

The  certainty  of  flight  from  London  to  In- 
dia was  demonstrated.  A  bi-weekly  service 
for  both  passengers  and  mails  was  at  once 
planned.  Almost  immediately  preparations 
for  the  route  were  worked  out,  twenty-five 
airdromes  and  landing-fields  were  desig- 
nated, of  which  the  main  ones  would  be  at 
Cairo  and  Basra  on  the  Tigris,  with  sub- 
sidiary fields  at  Marseilles,  Pisa,  or  Rome, 
Taranto,  Sollum,  Bushire,  Damascus,  Bag- 
21 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

dad,  Bander  Abbas,  Karachi,  Hyderabad, 
and  Jodhpur.  It  is  estimated  that  the  flight 
of  6,000  miles,  at  stages  of  about  350  each, 
would  take  seven  or  eight  days  as  against 
the  present  train  and  steamer  time  of  five  or 
six  weeks.  At  the  same  time  another  route 
far  shorter  than  that  which  would  be  neces- 
sary by  following  the  sea  route  lies  over  Ger- 
many, Russia,  and  the  ideal  flying-land  along 
the  Caspian  Sea,  Krasnovodsk,  Askabad, 
Herat,  Kandahar,  and  Multan. 

As  with  Asia  Minor  and  Asia  so  with 
Africa,  the  British  at  once  made  plans  for 
aerial  routes.  Only  a  few  weeks  after  the 
armistice  announcement  was  made  of  plans 
for  an  "  All  Red  Air  Route"  from  Cairo  across 
the  desert  and  the  jungle  to  the  Cape.  This 
could  all  be  done  over  British  territory,  with 
the  part  over  Lakes  Victoria  Nyanza  and 
Tanganyika  covered  by  hydroplanes.  The 
moment  men  were  released  from  the  war, 
surveying  of  this  route  was  begun  and  tenta- 
tive plans  made  for  landing-fields  every  200 
miles  over  the  5,700-mile  trip. 

The  air  is  ours  to  do  whatever  we  can  with 
it.  There  must  be  developed  a  large  interest 
in  this  country  in  the  business  of  flying. 
We  must  make  the  air  our  third,  fastest,  and 
most  reliable  means  of  communication  be- 

22 


THE  TRANSITION  TO  PEACE 

tween  points  in  a  way  to  compete  with 
transportation  on  land  and  sea.  The  air- 
plane, instead  of  being  the  unusual  thing, 
must  become  a  customary  sight  over  our 
cities  and  villages.  The  first  step  hi  the 
development  is  the  training  of  airplane  pilots 
and  mechanics. 


Ill 

TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

ANY  ordinary,  active  man  can  fly.  That 
is  to  say,  any  man  With  nerve  enough  to 
take  a  cold  bath  or  drive  an  automobile  down 
Fifth  Avenue  can  maintain  himself  in  the  air 
with  an  airplane,  and  turn  into  a  good  pilot 
with  practice.  In  other  words,  the  regular 
man  who  rides  in  the  Subway,  who  puts  on 
a  straw  hat  on  May  15th  or  20th,  as  the  case 
may  be,  has  not  only  the  right  to  be  in  the 
air,  but  owes  it  to  himself  to  learn  to  fly. 

Any  one  with  a  reasonable  amount  of 
intelligence  can  be  made  a  good  pilot.  He 
need  not  hold  a  college  degree,  or  even  a 
high-school  diploma,  tucked  away  in  some 
forgotten  place.  If  he  has  the  sense  of  touch 
of  the  normal  man,  the  sense  of  balance  of  a 
normal  man,  can  skate,  or  ride  a  bicycle, 
he  should  be  in  the  air,  flying.  There  is  a 
difference  between  the  war  or  army  pilot 
and  the  peace-time  flier  yet  to  be  developed. 

24 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

War  flying  calls  for  highly  trained  men, 
a  man  who  has  proved  himself  fit  for  combat 
under  all  conditions,  a  man  who  can  shoot 
straight,  think  quickly,  and  turn  immediately. 
He  must  possess  a  little  more  than  the 
average  nerve,  perhaps,  or  he  must  be  trained 
to  the  point  where  shooting  and  maneuvering 
are  the  natural  reactions  to  certain  cir- 
cumstances. He  must  be  able  to  stand 
altitudes  of  20,000  feet;  he  must  be  quick 
with  his  machine-gun,  have  a  knowledge  of 
artillery,  and  know,  in  fact,  a  little  about 
everything  on  the  front  he  is  trying  to  cover. 
This  requires  training  and  aptitude. 

The  day  is  coming  for  the  man  who  wants 
to  make  a  short  pleasure  flight,  or  go  from 
town  to  town,  touring  by  air.  He  need 
know  nothing  of  machine-guns  or  warfare. 
He  may  never  want  to  do  anything  more 
hazardous  in  the  way  of  maneuver  than  a 
gentle  turn.  His  maximum  altitude  would 
be  perhaps  8,000  feet.  He  would  in  all 
probability  be  flying  a  machine  whose  "  ceil- 
ing" was  10,000  feet,  and  he  might  never 
care  to  tour  at  a  height  higher  than  2,000  feet. 
There  is  no  reason  why  he  should  go,  high. 
One  can  have  all  the  thrills  in  the  world  at 
2,000  feet,  follow  the  ground  more  easily, 
without  wasting  time  or  gasolene  in  attempts 

25 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

to  fly  high  enough  so  that  the  earth  looks 
like  another  planet  below. 

Let  us  illustrate  a  bit  from  the  Royal  Air 
Force  of  Canada,  which  is  as  good  as  any 
other  example.  The  experience  of  the  flying 
service  of  one  country  has  been  essentially 
that  of  another  country,  and  we  Americans 
may  yet  learn  of  the  air  from  the  English. 
In  England  the  air  is  just  another  medium  of 
travel,  as  much  a  medium  as  the  ground  and 
water — but  that  is,  of  course,  another  story. 

In  1917  the  Royal  Flying  Corps,  later  in- 
corporated into  the  Royal  Air  Force,  came 
to  Canada  to  take  up  the  instruction  of 
Canadian  boys  for  flying  in  France.  Ameri- 
cans enlisted  with  the  pick  of  the  Canadian 
youth,  and  droves  were  sent  overseas.  Very 
soon  the  cream  had  been  skimmed  off  and 
there  came  a  time  when  material  was  scarce. 
Meanwhile  the  war  raged,  and  there  was  no 
option  but  to  take  drafted  men  from  all 
sections,  Montreal  in  particular.  Many 
could  not  speak  intelligible  English,  and  few 
had  enjoyed  any  educational  advantages. 
The  men  who  came  as  cadets  to  be  trained  as 
pilots  in  1918  graded  much  lower  in  personal 
and  physical  qualifications  than  the  type  of 
the  previous  year.  And  yet  these  same 
drafted  men,  who  had  withstood  for  three  and 

26 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

a  half  years  the  call  of  their  country,  had 
more  control  over  their  machines  at  the  end 
of  their  course  than  the  men  of  the  year 
before. 

At  the  end  of  four,  five,  or  six  hours'  solo 
these  men  could  do  all  the  high  maneuvers, 
commonly  thought  dangerous,  such  as  the 
barrel  roll,  the  loop,  the  stall  turn,  the  Im- 
melmann  turn.  An  astounding  showing  com- 
pared to  the  boys  of  1917,  who  were  forbidden 
to  stunt  and  who  rarely  disobeyed  the  orders. 
In  our  American  service  we  had  specially 
selected  men.  They  were  college  men,  tested, 
qualified,  and  picked.  But  our  men — and 
it's  no  reflection  on  them — seldom  did  their 
higher  maneuvers  with  less  than  fifty  hours 
of  solo  flying. 

There  is  just  one  answer — it  is  a  matter 
entirely  of  training. 

It  might  be  said  that  the  Canadian  casual- 
ties on  the  Texas  flying-fields  near  Fort 
Worth  during  the  winter  of  1917-18,  when 
the  Royal  Air  Force  occupied  two  airdromes, 
were  the  cause  of  comment  all  over  the 
country.  There  were  fifty  fatalities  in  twenty 
weeks  of  flying,  and  machine  after  machine 
came  down  in  a  fatal  spinning-nose  dive, 
or  tail  spin,  as  the  Americans  speak  of  the 
spin. 

27 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

Shortly  after  the  Royal  Air  Force  returned 
to  its  airdromes  in  Canada  in  the  middle  of 
April  the  Gosport  system  of  flying  training, 
which  had  been  used  successfully  in  England, 
was  begun  on  the  Curtiss  J.  N.  4B-type 
training-plane.  The  result  was  an  immedi- 
ate and  material  decrease  in  fatal  accidents. 
In  July,  1918,  there  was  one  fatality  for 
every  1,760  hours  of  flying,  and  by  October 
fatalities  had  been  reduced  to  one  in  every 
5,300  hours  of  flying.  That  is  a  remarkable 
achievement,  as  official  data  from  other 
centers  of  training  show  one  death  in  a  flying 
accident  for  every  1,170  hours. 

Briefly,  the  Gosport  system  is  a  graduated 
method  of  flying  instruction.  The  cadet  is 
led  by  easy  steps  through  the  earlier  part 
of  the  training,  and  only  after  he  has  passed 
aerial  tests  in  the  simpler  methods  of  control 
is  he  allowed  to  continue  with  the  rest  of 
his  course  and  "go  solo."  The  scheme 
provides  that  before  he  goes  solo  he  must 
have  spun,  and  shown  that  he  can  take  his 
instructor  out  of  a  spin.  Only  then  is  he 
considered  fit  to  go  on  his  own. 

" Dangerous "  and  "Safe"  as  terms  to 
describe  flying  technique  gave  way  to  wrong 
and  right.  There  was  built  up  under  sound 
instruction  one  of  the  best  schools  of  flying 

28 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

in  North  America,  the  School  of  Special 
Flying,  at  Armour  Heights,  Ontario.  There 
is  no  reason  why  there  should  not  be  estab- 
lished in  this  country  a  number  of  such 
schools,  under  men  who  have  had  army 
experience,  to  train  great  numbers  of  civilian 
fliers  within  the  next  few  years.  There  is 
going  to  be  a  strong  demand  for  the  best 
flying  instruction  that  can  be  given.  It 
should  be  noted  that  only  the  most  perfect 
system  of  flying  instruction  should  be  used, 
for  the  best  is  safest,  and  the  safest,  no  matter 
how  expensive,  is  comparatively  cheap. 

There  is  no  reason  why  there  should  be  an 
extended  period  of  ground  instruction  for 
the  non-military  pilot  of  the  future.  He 
should  be  taught  the  elementary  principles 
of  the  theory  of  flight,  should  know  something 
about  the  engine  with  which  he  is  going  to 
fly,  and  understand  some  things  about  the 
rigging  of  his  airplane.  The  details  could 
come  to  him  in  constant  association  with 
the  airplane  before,  during,  and  after  each 
flight.  No  time  need  be  spent  on  such 
subjects  as  artillery  observation,  machine- 
gunnery,  wireless,  bombing,  photography, 
patrol  work,  and  other  subjects  of  a  purely 
military  nature,  on  which  so  much  stress  has 
been  laid  in  training  army  pilots. 

29 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

"What  is  an  airplane?"  Before  going 
ahead  with  the  method  of  Gosport  instruc- 
tion every  pupil  is  given  a  lecture  on  the 
ground  in  which  he  is  asked  that  question. 
One  definition  which  was  passed  out  to  us  in 
Canada  was,  "  An  airplane  is  a  machine  . . ." 
At  this  point  the  flight  sergeant  in  charge 
of  rigging  would  look  dreamily  into  the  dis- 
tance. "An  airplane  is  a  machine  .  .  ."  he 
would  begin  again  with  an  air  of  utter  despond- 
ency. That  was  certainly  no  news  to  cadets. 
They  had  an  idea  that  it  might  be  a  machine, 
and  wanted  to  know  more  about  it. 

"An  airplane  is  a  machine  with  lift- 
generating  surfaces  attached  to  a  frame 
which  carries  an  engine,  fuel,  aviator,  and 
devices  by  which  he  steers,  balances,  and 
controls  his  craft,"  the  mournful  flight 
sergeant  was  finally  able  to  convince 
them. 

Lift-generating  surfaces — these  are  the 
bases  of  all  flying.  Every  one  knows,  for 
instance,  that  a  paper  dart,  instead  of  falling 
directly  to  the  floor,  sails  in  a  gliding  angle 
for  some  distance  before  crashing.  Lift  is 
generated  under  those  plane  surfaces  moving 
through  the  air — and  the  lift  keeps  that 
paper  dart  gliding.  Little  eddies  of  air  are 
compressed  under  its  tiny  wings.  Imagine 
30 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

an  engine  in  the  dart,  propelling  it  at  some 
speed.  Instead  of  having  to  nose  down  to 
get  enough  speed  to  generate  lift  under  its 
wings,  the  dart  would  be  able  to  fly  on  the 
level,  or  even  climb  a  bit. 

Just  so  with  an  airplane.  A  gliding  air- 
plane about  to  land  with  power  shut  off  is 
that  paper  dart  on  a  large  scale.  The  air- 
plane flying  is  the  dart  with  power.  To 
make  the  airplane  safe  to  fly,  to  give  control 
to  the  pilot  so  that  he  may  steer  it  where 
he  wants  to,  there  is  a  rudder,  moved  by  a 
rudder-bar  under  the  foot  of  the  pilot.  It 
is  impossible  to  turn  a  swiftly  moving  air- 
plane in  the  air  by  the  rudder  alone.  It 
must  be  banked  to  prevent  skidding,  even 
as  a  race-track  is  banked  high  on  the  turns. 
On  its  side  an  airplane  will  cushion  its  own 
bank  of  proper  degree  by  the  use  of  ailerons. 
These  ailerons  are  sections  of  the  wing-tips 
which  may  be  moved  either  up  or  down. 
They  are  counterbalanced  so  that  movement 
of  the  left  down  gives  you  the  right  aileron 
up.  With  left  aileron  down,  the  lift  of  the 
left  wing  is  increased,  and  it  tips  up;  at  the 
same  time  the  lift  of  the  right  wing  is  de- 
creased, and  it  sags  down.  In  that  way  the 
airplane  is  tipped  up  for  a  bank.  These 

ailerons,  wing  sections,  really,  are  controlled 
31 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

by  a  device  known  as  the  joy-stick  in  the 
cockpit. 

We  have  seen  how  an  airplane  is  made 
to  tip  and  turn.  Before  a  machine  is  under 
control  we  must  be  able  to  climb,  or  come 
down  to  the  ground  for  a  landing.  Vertical 
control  of  an  airplane  is  attained  by  the 
use  of  elevators,  flaps  on  the  tail  plane  acting 
as  horizontal  rudders.  A  pull-back  on  the 
joy-stick  lifts  the  flaps,  raises  the  nose  of  the 
machine,  and  causes  it  to  gain  height.  Push 
the  joy-stick  forward,  the  elevators  are 
turned  down,  and  the  machine  goes  into  a 
dive  for  the  ground.  In  making  many 
maneuvers  all  three  controls,  rudder,  ailerons, 
and  elevators,  are  used  at  once  and  the  pilot 
feels  his  way  with  the  machine,  guiding  it 
with  the  stick  and  the  rudder-bar. 

After  the  explanation  of  the  use  of  these 
controls,  and  their  demonstration  on  the 
machine  as  it  awaits  its  turn  in  the  air,  the 
pupil  is  taken  up  for  his  first  ride — strictly 
a  joy  ride,  and  not  always  joyous  for  those 
who  take  every  chance  to  be  seasick.  After 
he  has  a  glimpse  of  what  the  ground  looks 
like  from  the  air,  and  has  recovered  from  his 
fh-st  breathless  sweep  off  the  ground,  the 
pupil  is  given  a  lesson  in  the  demonstration 
of  controls.  The  instructor  explains  through 

32 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

a  speaking-tube  attached  to  his  helmet  the 
very  simple  principles.  Forward  with  the 
stick  to  nose  down,  back  to  lift  it  up,  left 
stick  tilts  the  machine  over  on  its  left  wing, 
and  right  stick  banks  it  to  the  right.  Right 
stick  and  right  rudder,  in  proper  proportions, 
turn  the  machine  to  the  right,  left  stick  and 
left  rudder  to  take  the  machine  out  of  the 
turn  and  fly  it  straight  again. 

Then  the  wonderful  moment  when  the 
instructor  calls  through  the  tube,  "All  right, 
now  you  take  the  stick."  You  clutch  it  as 
though  it  were  the  one  straw  in  a  great 
ocean.  "Not  so  hard/'  comes  the  voice. 
"Now  put  your  feet  gently  on  the  rudder- 
bar.  Not  so  rough;  easier,  man,  easier 
on  that  stick!"  For  a  glorious  moment 
she  is  yours,  you  hold  her  nose  up,  and  you 
are  flying  an  airplane  tearing  over  the 
checkerboard  country  far  below. 

Then,  like  the  voice  of  doom:  "Now,  do 
a  gentle  turn  to  the  left.  Don't  forget  to 
give  her  rudder  and  stick  at  the  same  time. 
That's  right.  Begin  the  motion  with  your 
feet  and  hands  at  the  same  time."  The 
World  swings  furiously,  and  down  below  that 
left  wing-tip  a  little  farm  sways  gently. 

"Now  you  are  in  a  gentle  turn — feel  that 
breeze  on  your  cheek?  We  are  side-slipping; 

33 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

give  her  a  touch  more  of  left  rudder.  Not 
so  much.  Now  your  nose  is  dropping;  pull 
back  on  the  stick.  Back!  Not  forward!  Back! 
Now  your  nose  is  too  high;  take  us  out,  and 
don't  forget  that  opposite  stick  and  rudder. 

"Now  fly  straight  for  a  few  minutes. 
Your  right  wing  is  low — bring  it  up.  Your 
nose  is  too  high.  Now  it  is  too  low.  Keep 
it  so  that  the  radiator  cap  is  above  the 
horizon.  That's  right." 

So  goes  the  business  of  instruction  through 
the  lessons  on  straight  flying,  gentle  turns, 
misuse  of  controls,  side-slipping,  and  ap- 
proach, take-off,  and  landing.  The  trips 
should  average  thirty-five  or  forty  minutes, 
long  enough  to  teach  the  lesson,  but  not  long 
enough  to  weary  the  pupil.  Here  at  take-off 
and  landing  the  pupil  finds  himself  up  against 
the  most  difficult  part  of  his  training.  He 
has  the  problem  of  stopping  a  large  machine 
weighing  a  ton  or  more,  traveling  at  a  land- 
ing speed  of  forty  to  fifty  miles  an  hour, 
with  the  center  of  gravity  just  balanced 
over  the  under-carriage.  An  error  in  judg- 
ment will  pile  the  machine  up  on  its  nose 
with  a  crashed  propeller,  and  perhaps  two 
broken  wings  and  damaged  under-carriage. 
Not  a  dangerous  accident  for  the  pilot,  but 

very  humiliating. 

34 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

Army  practice  has  shown  that  a  pupil 
should  have  about  sixty  practice  landings 
dual,  that  is  to  say,  coached  and  helped  by 
his  instructor.  By  this  time  he  has  a  total 
flying  time  of  six  to  twelve  hours.  At  this 
point,  before  he  goes  solo,  the  Gosport  system 
provides  that  he  shall  be  taken  to  a  reason- 
ably safe  height  for  the  practice  of  high 
maneuvers.  At  a  height  of  say  two  thousand 
five  hundred  feet  the  instructor  shows  him 
how  a  stalled  machine  falls  into  a  spin.  The 
question  of  teaching  higher  maneuvers  to 
civilian  pilots  is  open  to  argument. 

As  soon  as  the  instructor  shuts  off  the 
engine  the  machine  rapidly  loses  flying  speed. 
It  reaches  a  point  where  there  is  not  enough 
air  passing  over  the  wing  surfaces  to  support 
the  plane  in  the  air.  Her  nose  begins  to 
drop,  and  he  pulls  the  stick  back.  The  stick 
is  full  back,  she  stalls,  topples  over  on  her 
side,  and  plunges  nose  first.  The  instructor 
kicks  on  full  rudder,  and  the  world  whirls 
below  like  a  top,  and  the  air  whistles,  swish, 
swish,  swish,  in  the  wires  at  every  turn. 
Stick  forward,  opposite  rudder,  and  she 
comes  out  so  fast  that  your  head  swims. 
That  is  the  spin. 

"Now  you  try  it,"  says  the  instructor. 
For  there  is  nothing  to  a  spin  unless  a 
4  35 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

machine  does  not  come  out  of  it — a  rare 
thing  if  the  plane  is  properly  handled.  The 
pupil  is  now  ready  to  go  solo,  and  for  the 
first  couple  of  hours'  solo  flying  he  does 
nothing  but  make  circuits  around  the  field, 
landing  and  taking  off.  Then  his  instructor 
takes  him  dual  for  forced-landing  practice, 
business  of  getting  down  into  a  field  within 
gliding  range  by  gliding  turns.  Then  the 
pupil  tries  it  solo,  throttling  down  for  the 
practice,  a  most  valuable  experience  which  in- 
creases the  confidence  of  the  pilot .  He  learns  to 
use  his  own  judgment  and  to  gauge  height  and 
ground  distance  as  it  appears  from  the  air. 
After  three  or  four  hours  of  solo  time  the 
pupil  is  scheduled  for  another  demonstration 
of  higher  maneuvers,  spinning  and  the  stall 
turn.  For  the  stall  turn  the  pilot  noses  the 
machine  down  to  get  an  air  speed  of  seventy- 
five  miles  an  hour.  A  little  bank,  stick  back, 
she  rears  into  the  air  with  her  nose  to  the 
sky  and  propeller  roaring.  Full  rudder 
and  throttle  off.  In  silence  she  drops  over 
on  her  side  into  the  empty  air;  blue  sky  and 
green  fields  flash  by  in  a  whirl.  She  hangs 
on  her  back  while  the  passengers  strain 
against  the  safety  belts,  and  then  her  nose 
plunges.  The  air  shrieks  in  the  wires  as  the 
ground  comes  up  at  terrific  speed. 

36 


TRAINING  AN  AIRPLANE  PILOT 

It  is  time  for  the  pupil  to  go  up  for  his 
solo  spin  under  the  plan  adopted  for  army 
purposes.  Up,  up,  up  the  pupil  flies,  three 
thousand  feet,  and  the  ground  below  looks 
soft  and  green.  Would  it  be  soft  to  hit  in  a 
spin  from  that  height?  It  would  not.  Have 
people  ever  spun  that  far?  he  wonders.  They 
have.  Have  machines  ever  failed  to  come 
out  of  a  spin  and  killed  the  pilot?  The 
answer  is  too  obvious.  With  faith  in  nothing 
in  particular,  and  with  his  mind  made  up 
that  one  can  die  but  once  in  a  spin,  he  stalls 
and  spins  her — and  comes  out.  He  is  so 
surprised  and  exhilarated  that  he  tries  it 
again  before  he  loses  his  nerve.  Yet  again. 
The  pupil  is  a  pilot,  the  air  has  no  terrors, 
and  he  has  learned  the  oldest  truth  of  flying, 
that  there  is  nothing  to  a  spin  unless  you 
don't  come  out. 

The  natural  result  of  training  a  pupil 
along  those  lines  is  that  he  graduates  rapidly 
into  a  good  stunting  pilot.  He  realizes  that 
he  cannot  tempt  the  devil  at  three  hundred 
feet  and  hope  to  live,  but  he  takes  a  good 
altitude,  throws  his  machine  upside  down, 
and  knows  that,  given  enough  air,  he  must 
come  out.  He  does  come  out  unless  he  loses 
complete  control  of  his  mind  and  body. 
With  fifteen  hours  of  solo  flying  the  pupil 

37 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

has  really  become  a  pilot.  He  is  beginning 
to  show  that  he  can  control  his  machine. 
From  then  on  it  is  a  question  of  the  polish- 
ing of  the  nice  points,  making  his  forced 
landings  perfect,  not  side-slipping  a  foot 
on  his  vertical  banks,  and  coming  out  of  spin 
so  that  he  always  faces  the  airdrome — all  of 
which  distinguish  the  good  pilot  from  the 
poor  pilot. 


IV 

SAFETY  IN   FLYING 

THE  fatalities  on  the  training-fields  of 
every  country  during  the  period  of 
training  in  war,  and  before  and  after  the  war, 
testify  only  too  surely  that  flying  cannot 
be  absolutely  safe.  It  is  no  reflection  on  the 
future  of  flying  to  realize  that  it  has  not  been 
safe,  and  that  it  can  never,  perhaps,  be 
made  fool-proof.  One  or  two  things  must 
be  remembered  before  we  become  despondent 
over  the  future  safety  of  flying. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war 
the  entire  personnel  of  the  Signal  Corps 
numbered  one  hundred  and  sixty  officers 
and  men.  At  the  tune  the  armistice  was 
signed  more  than  thirty  thousand  pilots 
had  been  trained.  They  were  trained  in 
great  numbers  under  high  pressure.  We 
did  not  have  the  machines  to  train  them  in 
or  the  instructors  to  fly  with  them.  We 
had  not  the  experience  in  wholesale  training 
of  flying-men,  and  yet  we  turned  out  vast 
numbers.  It  was  a  question  of  getting  the 

39 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

men  through  their  flying  and  getting  them 
overseas  as  quickly  as  possible.  We  had  no 
adequate  methods  of  inspection  of  machines, 
and  no  laid-out  course  in  flying-training. 
We  had  to  learn  by  our  own  experience,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  England  at  all  times 
gave  unstinted  aid. 

The  wonder  is  really  that  we  did  not  have 
more  flying  accidents.  There  were  few  men 
in  the  country  who  really  understood  what 
conditions  tended  toward  a  flying  accident. 
There  were  few  who  had  ever  gone  into  a 
spin  and  lived  to  tell  about  it.  At  that  time 
a  spinning-nose  dive  was  a  manifestation  of 
hard  luck — like  a  German  shell.  If  you 
once  got  into  it,  it  was  only  the  matter  of 
waiting  for  the  crash  and  hoping  that  the 
hospital  might  be  able  to  pull  you  through. 

Toward  the  end,  of  course,  this  situation 
had  been  largely  overcome,  the  Gosport 
system  of  flying  had  been  tried  out,  and 
there  was  a  vast  increase  in  the  knowledge 
of  flying  among  the  instructors  and  pupils. 
The  spin  had  been  conquered,  training  was 
on  a  sound  basis,  and  accidents  were  being 
rapidly  cut  down. 

One  of  the  most  obvious  ways  to  cut  down 
crashes  was  by  making  sure  that  the  pilot 
was  in  good  condition  physically.  Flight 

40 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

surgeons  assigned  to  every  camp  were  de- 
tailed to  make  a  study  of  the  very  delicate 
relationship  between  a  sick  and  stale  pilot 
and  the  crash.  It  was  discovered,  for  in- 
stance, that  a  man  who  went  up  not  in  the 
best  condition  multiplied  by  many  times 
the  ordinary  hazards  in  the  air.  It  became 
the  duty  of  these  surgeons  to  conduct  recrea- 
tion and  exercises  so  that  pilots  would  always 
be  in  good  trim. 

Flying  for  an  early  solo  pupil  is  the  greatest 
mental  strain  that  a  man  can  experience. 
Every  moment  the  fact  that  he  is  up  in  the 
air,  supported  only  by  wood,  wires,  and 
fabric,  may  be  on  his  mind.  He  is  making 
desperate  efforts  to  remember  everything 
his  instructor  has  told  him  since  he  started 
his  dual.  He  tries  to  keep  that  nose  on  the 
horizon,  the  wings  balanced,  and  the  machine 
flying  true.  He  is  in  fear  of  stalling  and 
consequent  loss  of  control.  He  goes  into  his 
turns,  hardly  knowing  whether  he  is  going 
to  come  out  of  them,  and  noses  down  for  a 
landing,  mentally  giving  prayer,  perhaps, 
that  he  will  come  out  all  right.  He  can't 
possibly  remember  everything  he  has  been 
told,  but  he  tries  to  salvage  as  much  knowl- 
edge as  possible  to  make  a  decent  landing. 

These  experiences  tend  to  bring  about  two 

41 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

conditions,  aerophobia  (fear  of  the  air)  and 
brain  fatigue,  both  resulting  in  complete 
loss  of  head  on  the  part  of  the  pilot  and 
inability  to  react  to  impulses.  Nothing  is 
more  likely  to  produce  immediate  and  fatal 
aerophobia  than  the  sickening  sight  from 
the  air  of  a  crash,  yellow  wings  flattened  out 
against  the  green  ground  a  thousand  feet 
below.  A  comrade,  a  tentmate?  The  pupil 
looks  at  his  machine,  sees  the  wires  throbbing, 
and  watches  with  wonder  the  phenomenon 
of  rushing  through  the  air — he  may  let  his 
imagination  dwell  too  long. 

During  his  first  hour's  solo  a  swift  stream 
of  hundreds  of  impulses  is  borne  along  the 
nerve  centers  to  the  brain  of  a  pupil.  It  is 
like  the  pounding  of  heavy  seas  against  a 
light  sea-wall.  His  brain  reels  under  the 
repeated  shocks  and  the  pupil  falls  into  a 
detached  stupor.  He  waits  while  his  engine 
throbs  ahead,  and  lets  the  machine  fly  itself. 
He  seems  to  take  no  active  participation 
in  the  operation,  and  unless  he  recovers  con- 
trol of  his  brain  and  his  machine  it  is  a  crash. 
Physicians  then  have  the  problem  of  learning 
from  a  dazed  and  perhaps  badly  injured 
man  how  it  happened.  He  can  recall  noth- 
ing, and  seldom  knows  when  he  lost  control. 

These  are  the  things  that  happened  when 

42 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

this  country  was  hastening  fliers  overseas. 
As  a  matter  of  national  necessity  it  was 
essential  that  as  many  men  as  possible  be 
put  through  their  dual  and  solo  flying  and 
sent  across  to  the  other  side.  It  was  better 
for  the  country  at  large  to  turn  out  five 
hundred  pilots  a  month,  say,  with  5  per 
cent,  of  casualties,  than  one  hundred  a 
month  with  one-half  of  1  per  cent,  or  less  of 
accidents.  These  figures  do  not  represent 
the  actual  conditions,  but  they  picture  the 
problem. 

Now  the  civilian  who  would  take  up  flying 
has  just  as  much  time  as  he  wants  to  spend 
in  learning  to  fly.  He  is  paying  for  his 
instruction,  and  he  should  continue  it  for 
perhaps  fifteen  to  twenty  hours  of  dual  in- 
struction. He  should  fly  the  machine  with 
an  instructor  in  it,  and  really  get  accustomed 
to  the  feel  of  the  air.  He  should  become 
sensitive  enough  so  that  he  can  differentiate 
between  the  tight,  firm  touch  to  a  machine 
flying  under  complete  control  and  the  slack 
movement  of  stick  and  rudder  of  a  plane 
very  nearly  out  of  control.  He  should 
recognize  these  danger  signs  and  know  how 
to  correct  his  flying  position. 

Dual  flying  should  be  continued  up  to  the 

point  where  the  pupil  flies  without  thinking, 
43 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

when  it  becomes  the  natural  thing  for  him 
to  use  both  stick  and  rudder  to  correct  a 
bump,  and  when  he  thinks  no  more  of  it 
than  riding  over  a  rut  in  a  road.  He  should 
be  able  to  tell  by  ear,  when  volplaning, 
whether  or  not  he  is  maintaining  sufficient 
speed  to  hold  it  in  the  air.  He  should  be 
acquainted  with  the  principle  of  spinning, 
and  should  have  had  some  experience  in 
taking  a  machine  out  of  a  spin. 

The  treacherous  thing  about  a  spinning- 
nose  dive  is  that,  to  come  out  of  it,  a  pilot 
must  put  his  stick  forward,  not  hold  it  back, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  machine  is  falling 
nose  first  and  spinning  at  the  same  time. 
A  spin  is  possible  only  from  a  stall,  and  only 
when  the  stick  is  back  and  rudder  in  either 
direction  is  given.  The  position  is  an  easy 
one  to  get  into  from  a  steep  turn.  Air 
resistance  against  a  machine  turning  becomes 
greater,  it  slows  down  the  speed,  decreases 
the  lifting  power  of  the  planes.  The  result 
is  that  the  nose  falls  slightly.  The  pilot 
moves  the  stick  back  to  lift  the  nose,  and  in 
doing  so  pulls  up  his  elevators,  offering  still 
more  resistance  to  the  air,  and  checking  the 
speed.  The  effect  becomes  cumulative;  he 
tries  to  hold  up  his  machine,  and  he  has 

stalled.    In  a  last  effort  to  check  the  spin 
44 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

he  kicks  on  the  rudder,  and  the  thing  is 
done. 

The  rudder  and  elevators  have  formed  a 
pocket  in  the  tail  plane,  which  is  like  the 
spoon  on  a  trolling-hook.  The  pocket  is 
off-center  and  the  air  rushes  into  it  as  the 
machine  topples  over  and  plunges  down. 
It  imparts  a  twisting  motion,  which  in  a 
turn  or  two  develops  into  a  throbbing  spin. 
Picture  the  pilot,  trying  to  lift  the  nose  of 
his  machine  by  holding  his  stick  well  back 
and  wondering  why  the  nose  does  not  come 
up.  The  pathetic  thing  is  that  so  many 
hundred  men  have  thought  their  salvation 
was  to  hold  the  stick  back. 

The  only  possible  thing  to  do  in  this  case 
is  to  break  the  pocket.  Put  the  stick  for- 
ward to  neutral,  or  even  farther  if  need  be, 
and  opposite  rudder.  The  machine  will  come 
out  in  three-quarters  of  a  turn  with  practice, 
into  a  straight-nose  dive.  Then  ease  the 
stick  back,  and  this  time  the  nose  comes  up 
and  the  machine  flies  on  its  course.  In- 
structors who  have  taught  their  pupils  this 
before  they  let  them  go  solo  have  saved  many, 
many  lives. 

It  is  reasonable  to  say  that  there  are  no 
fatal  accidents  except  those  from  a  spin, 
but,  like  all  general  statements,  that  is 

45 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

open  to  contradiction.  A  nose-high  side-slip 
may  be  fatal,  but  generally  the  pilot  pulls 
himself  out  of  it.  There  may  have  been 
men  killed  in  landing  accidents,  but  one 
seldom  hears  of  them.  Men  have  been 
killed  trying  to  loop  off  the  ground,  and 
Vernon  Castle  was  killed  doing  an  Immel- 
mann  turn  at  fifty  feet  to  avoid  another 
machine.  These  are  the  exceptions.  The 
common  or  garden  variety  of  accident  is 
from  a  spin.  The  spin  once  conquered,  the 
air  is  conquered. 

One  hears  about  stunting,  and  the  acci- 
dents which  result  from  taking  chances  in 
the  air.  There  may  be  two  opinions  about 
whether  for  the  flying  of  the  future  it  should 
be  necessary  to  loop,  to  roll,  to  half  roll,  and 
stall  turn,  or  even  to  spin.  As  to  looping 
and  rolling,  the  question  of  the  type  of 
machine  to  be  flown  will  determine  that 
largely.  There  are  many  machines  which 
cannot  be  looped.  The  large  naval  flying- 
boats,  for  instance,  describe  a  circle  two  thou- 
sand feet  in  diameter  for  each  turnover — 
it  is  almost  obvious  that  not  much  stunting 
is  done  on  these  boats.  A  small  scout  or 
sporting  plane  can  loop  and  come  out  higher 
than  it  went  in. 

There  is  certain  value  in  practising  such 

46 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

maneuvers  if  the  machine  will  permit  it. 
In  battle  they  are,  of  course,  essential.  In 
peace,  however,  they  may  be  valuable  for 
the  very  fact  that  it  accustoms  a  pilot  to 
unexpected  changes  in  the  air.  He  gets 
used  to  the  idea  that  he  can  pull  himself 
out  of  any  position,  given  air  enough,  and 
he  will  never  be  afraid.  He  becomes  orient- 
ated on  his  back,  does  not  lose  his  head,  and 
simply  waits  with  confidence  for  his  machine 
to  come  around.  This  means  that  if  he  is 
suddenly  overturned  by  accident,  or  for  a 
minute  or  two  loses  control,  he  knows  that 
his  condition  is  temporary  and  that  he  must 
simply  "  carry  on." 

Army  pilots  who  have  had  a  good  course 
in  stunting  would  certainly  recommend  the 
same  for  civilian  pilots.  That  does  not  mean 
that  it  would  be  necessary,  or  even  advisable. 
There  have  been  accidents  due  to  stunting 
by  both  inexperienced  and  experienced  pilots. 
Generally  it  is  a  matter  of  altitude,  for  with 
sufficient  height  the  greenest  pilot  can  come 
out  of  anything,  if  he  does  not  lose  his  head. 

For  the  man  who  would  be  the  pilot  for  a 
large  commercial  plane,  such  as  the  Glenn 
Martin  bomber,  the  Super  Handley-Page  in 
England,  or  the  Naval  Curtiss  flying-boats, 
no  stunting  is  necessary.  He  may  sit  in 

47 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

the  cockpit  of  his  machine,  and  ramble  off 
mile  after  mile  with  little  motion,  and  with 
as  little  effort  as  the  driver  of  a  railroad 
locomotive.  He  has  a  large,  steady  machine, 
and  there  will  be  no  obligation  for  him  to 
spill  his  freight  along  the  course  by  turning 
over  in  midair. 

Whatever  opinions  may  be  held  regarding 
the  advisability  of  teaching  stunting  to  a 
civilian  pilot,  there  can  be  no  question  that 
a  civilian  pilot  must  have  a  long  and  thorough 
course  in  the  very  gentle  but  essential  art 
of  making  forced  landings.  The  problem  is 
that  of  controlling  a  machine  with  its  engine 
cut  off,  to  have  complete  control  of  it  within 
the  radius  of  its  gliding  distance.  Again,  the 
dart  gliding  to  its  uncertain  landing.  In  the 
hands  of  an  unskilled  pilot,  an  airplane 
gliding  without  power  is  a  very  dangerous 
thing.  He  may  pile  up  the  machine  against 
some  f arm-house,  fence,  haymow,  or  clump 
of  woods,  smashing  it  badly  and  injuring 
himself.  Or  he  may,  through  inexperience, 
lose  flying  speed  in  the  course  of  his  descent 
and  topple  over  into  a  spin. 

Even  the  best  pilot  may  make  a  mess  of 
his  machine  if  his  engine  goes  "dud"  over  a 
forest,  city,  swamp,  or  other  impossible 
landing-place.  It  is  his  business  more  or 

48 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

less  to  keep  clear  of  such  tracts  when  flying. 
But  one  of  the  tests  of  a  good  pilot  is  whether 
or  not  he  can  shut  off  his  engine  in  the  air, 
pick  out  his  particular  field  below,  taking 
into  account  that  he  must  land  against  the 
wind,  then  by  a  series  of  gliding  turns  find 
himself  just  coming  out  of  the  last  turn  in 
front  of  the  fence.  He  may  make  a  gentle 
little  "zoom"  over  the  fence,  using  every 
last  bit  of  flying  speed  for  the  last  kick,  and 
settle  down  gently  on  the  other  side.  One 
test  of  instructors  in  Canada,  before  they 
were  allowed  to  take  up  pupils,  was  to  make 
three  perfect  forced  landings  in  succession- 
one  of  them  as  the  pilot  came  out  of  the  spin. 
With  his  head  still  reeling  he  must  pick  out 
his  landing-place  and  make  it. 

The  difficulty  is,  of  course,  not  to  under- 
shoot, to  fall  short.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  in  case  of  actual  engine  failure 
there  is  no  motive  power,  and  if  a  man  cal- 
culates his  distance  too  short,  he  has  nothing 
left  but  to  make  his  landing  where  he  may  be. 
He  has  lost  his  height  and  his  chance  to 
reach  other  fields.  He  may  find  himself 
rolling  into  the  fence  of  the  field  he  was 
trying  for. 

Or,  equally  bad,  he  may  overshoot.  The 
distance  was  shorter  than  it  looked,  he  has 

49 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

more  height  to  lose  than  he  thought.  He 
can  gain  nothing  by  sticking  the  nose  down, 
because  in  his  plunge  he  gains  speed  which 
will  carry  him  too  far  on  the  ground.  He 
may  bowl  over  the  fence,  or,  if  there  is  a  field 
beyond,  make  the  next  field.  More  often 
he  finds  himself  in  a  patch  of  woods  with  a 
broken  airplane. 

It  is  possible  that  on  a  turn,  a  gliding  turn 
with  the  engine  shut  off,  the  pilot  may  lose 
his  flying  speed.  Unless  he  is  experienced, 
he  does  not  realize  that  on  a  turn  the  machine 
presents  more  surfaces  to  the  air  and  greatly 
increases  the  air  resistance.  It  is  likely  to 
stall  unless  a  safe  margin  of  speed  is  main- 
tained. The  dangerous  part  of  this  is  that 
very  often  the  machine  will  lose  its  speed 
when  only  a  hundred  feet  from  the  ground, 
approaching  the  field.  There  is  no  chance 
to  pull  it  out  of  a  spin  unless  the  pilot  is 
alert  and  realizes  that  he  has  lost  speed,  and 
noses  down  before  he  spins.  Often  he  spins, 
and  a  fall  with  an  airplane  from  a  hundred 
feet  is  just  as  nasty  as  it  can  be. 

For  his  own  safety  in  the  air  the  civilian 
who  is  about  to  take  up  instruction  in  flying 
should  insist  at  his  flying-school  that  he  be 
taught  thoroughly,  to  his  own  satisfaction, 
the  control  of  his  machine  with  the  engine 

50 


SAFETY  IN  FLYING 

shut  off  for  the  moment.  There  is  a  certain 
feel,  a  sing  in  the  wires,  he  must  know.  He 
should  continue  at  the  work  of  forced  land- 
ings, going  on  his  solo  flights  to  various 
heights,  pick  out  his  field,  shut  off  the  motor, 
and  get  down  into  that  field — no  other. 
He  should  keep  it  up  until  he  can  make 
nine  out  of  every  ten  absolutely  perfect, 
and  the  tenth  one,  though  not  perfect,  still 
a  good  landing. 

Then  it  may  be  said  that  a  pilot  is  safe. 
When  he  knows  in  his  own  heart  that  nothing 
can  happen  to  him  which  will  throw  him 
off  his  guard,  or  which  will  worry  him,  he 
can  take  the  air  without  fear. 


QUALIFICATIONS  OF  AN  AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

WHAT  chance  has  a  good  automobile 
man  who  knows  his  engine  thoroughly 
to  become  an  airplane  mechanic?  There 
can  be  only  one  answer  to  this  question  which 
men  ask  themselves  daily — there  is  every 
chance  in  the  world.  Commercial  flying,  in 
the  day  when  the  air  is  to  become  a  medium 
of  transportation,  just  as  ground  and  water 
are  at  present,  must  draw  to  itself  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  mechanics.  The  only  thing 
to  which  the  future  of  flying  may  be  com- 
pared is  the  automobile  industry  at  present. 
And  the  only  place  from  which  the  mechanics 
are  to  be  recruited  are  from  the  men  who  are 
working  in  garages  putting  automobiles  in 
order. 

An  interesting  comparison  between  the 
future  for  the  automobile  mechanic  or  air- 
plane mechanic  compared  with  the  future 
for  the  pilot  is  afforded  in  the  figures  of  a 
well-known  flying-officer  of  great  vision. 
He  expects  that  the  skilled  mechanic,  the 

52 


AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

man  who  has  spent  years  at  his  trade,  will 
command  more  for  his  services  than  a  pilot. 
Any  one  can  learn  to  fly  an  airplane  in  one 
or  two  months  of  proper  training.  A  me- 
chanic may  work  for  years  to  learn  his 
profession. 

It  was  estimated  that  it  took  ten  mechanics 
of  various  kinds  on  the  ground  to  keep  one 
airplane  pilot  flying  in  the  air,  and  the 
experience  of  the  United  States  has  shown 
that  there  must  be  a  large  force  of  trained 
men  to  keep  up  flying.  The  present  leaders 
of  the  automobile  world  and  the  aeronautical 
world  are  men  who  got  their  first  interest 
in  mechanics  in  some  little  shop.  Glenn  H. 
Curtiss  and  Harry  G.  Hawker,  the  Aus- 
tralian pilot,  both  owned  little  bicycle-repair 
shops  before  they  saw  their  opportunity  hi 
flying. 

Most  essential  of  all,  for  the  man  who 
would  become  an  airplane  mechanic,  is  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  gasolene-engines. 
This  should  include  not  only  a  knowledge 
of  such  fundamentals  as  the  theory  of  the 
internal-combustion  engine,  carburetion, 
compression,  ignition,  and  explosion,  but 
also  a  keen  insight  into  the  whims  of  the 
human,  and  terribly  inhuman,  thing — the 
gasolene-motor.  Nothing  can  be  sweeter 

53 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

when  it  is  sweet,  and  nothing  more  devilish 
when  it  is  cranky,  than  an  airplane  engine. 

There  are  certain  technical  details  which 
distinguish  an  airplane  motor  from  an  auto- 
mobile motor,  but  a  man  who  knows  auto- 
mobile engines  can  master  the  airplane 
motor  in  short  order.  Generally  speaking, 
the  airplane  motor  differs  from  the  auto- 
mobile motor  in  shape.  The  Liberty  type 
of  engine  is  V-shaped,  with  both  sets  of 
cylinders  driving  toward  a  common  center, 
the  crankshaft.  Most  airplane  motors  have 
special  carbureters,  and  their  oiling  systems 
are  extremely  finely  adjusted  to  take  up 
any  friction  at  their  high  speed.  They  will 
be  found  to  be  lighter  in  weight,  with  pis- 
tons, piston  heads  and  other  parts  made  of 
aluminium.  They  are,  as  a  rule,  more  care- 
fully made  than  most  automobile  motors, 
with  especial  attention  to  the  fitting  of 
all  working  parts. 

One  advantage  which  an  airplane  mechanic 
has  is  standardization,  which  has  reached  a 
high  point  with  Liberty,  Hispano-Suiza, 
and  Curtiss  engines.  Once  a  mechanic  has 
learned  his  type  he  has  learned  practically 
every  engine  of  that  type.  For  a  long  time 
to  come  the  18,000  Liberty  engines  which 
this  country  had  at  the  time  the  armistice 

54 


AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

was  signed  will  be  carrying  commercial  air- 
planes across  broad  stretches  of  the  United 
States.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  pressure 
of  the  war  this  engine  might  have  been 
developed  slowly,  as  the  automobile  engines 
were,  with  changes  from  year  to  year.  The 
Liberty  engine  has  reached  a  high  standard 
of  efficiency,  and  is  likely  to  be  the  standard 
airplane  engine  hi  this  country  for  several 
years  to  come.  An  airplane  mechanic  who 
knows  his  Liberty  engine  will  be  able  to 
look  after  most  of  the  airplanes  with  which 
he  will  come  into  contact. 

An  engine  which  was  not  developed  to 
the  same  high  point  in  this  country  as  the 
Liberty  motor  is  the  rotary  engine,  of  which 
the  Gnome  Monosoupape  or  Clerget  are 
perhaps  the  best-known  types.  These  were 
favorites  with  airmen  flying  fighting  scout- 
planes.  They  weighed  practically  nothing, 
for  an  engine.  A  one-hundred-horse-power 
motor  weighed  only  two  hundred  and  sixty 
pounds,  and  it  was  a  splendid  type  for  fast 
work.  Briefly,  the  power  generated  by  the 
explosions  in  the  cylinders,  operating  against 
two  centers  of  pressure,  gave  a  rotary  motion 
to  the  cylinders  and  crankcase,  revolving 
around  a  stationary,  hollow  crankshaft. 
Cylinders  and  crankcase  were  bolted  to- 

55 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

gether,  and  the  cylinders  looked  like  the 
blades  of  an  electric  fan.  There  was  always 
an  odd  number  of  cylinders,  so  that  there 
would  be  no  dead-centers,  no  point  at  which 
two  opposing  strains  would  be  balanced, 
causing  the  engine  to  stop.  The  propeller 
was  bolted  on  a  nose  cap  which  revolved 
with  the  engine.  This  type  of  engine  is  not 
likely  to  be  used  to  any  extent  for  com- 
mercial flying,  or  even  flying  for  sport.  It 
is  expensive,  very  wasteful  of  gasolene  and 
oil,  and  difficult  to  keep  in  repair. 

For  men  who  may  have  had  some  experi- 
ence in  the  assembly  of  airplanes  at  fac- 
tories, or  of  rigging  them  at  flying-fields, 
there  is  great  opportunity.  Expert  riggers 
who  know  their  craft  are  few  and  hard  to 
get.  They  are  invaluable  for  maintaining 
a  machine  in  flying  condition.  The  use 
of  airplanes  in  this  country  will  require  men 
for  rigging,  for  truing  up  the  wires  and 
struts.  Each  airplane  must  be  overhauled 
after  a  few  hours  of  flight  to  discover  hidden 
weaknesses  and  to  tighten  sagging  wires. 

Rigging  an  airplane  has  some  resemblance 
to  rigging  a  ship  for  sailing.  The  first 
requisite  is  to  see  that  the  machine  is  prop- 
erly balanced  in  flying  position.  There  is 
a  number  of  minute  measurements  which 

56 


AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

come  with  the  blue-print  of  every  machine 
and  which  must  be  followed  out  to  the  letter 
to  get  the  most  successful  results.  An 'im- 
portant detail  is  the  pitch  of  the  planes, 
or  the  angle  of  incidence,  as  it  is  called.  This 
is  the  angle  which  a  plane  makes  with  the 
air  in  the  direction  of  its  motion.  Too  great 
a  pitch  will  slow  up  the  machine  by  offering 
too  great  a  resistance  to  the  air;  too  small 
an  angle  will  not  generate  enough  lift.  The 
tail  plane  must  be  attached  with  special 
care  for  its  position.  Its  angle  of  incidence 
must  exactly  balance  the  plane,  and  it  must 
be  bolted  on  so  that  there  is  no  chance  of  it 
cracking  off  under  strain. 

Radio  operators  will  be  in  great  demand 
for  flying.  Brig.-Gen.  A.  C.  Critchley, 
the  youngest  general  officer  in  the  British 
service,  who  was  a  pilot  in  the  Royal  Air 
Force,  said  that  the  future  development  of 
the  airplane  must  go  hand  in  hand  with  the 
development  of  wireless  communication.  He 
added  that  the  most  difficult  thing  about 
flying,  especially  ocean  flying,  was  to  keep 
the  course  in  heavy  weather.  There  are  no 
factors  which  will  help  a  man  on  "dead" 
reckoning;  and  a  shift  in  wind,  unknown  to 
the  navigator  of  a  plane,  will  carry  him 

hundreds  of  miles  from  his  objective.    The 
57 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

wireless  telephone  was  used  to  some  extent 
during  the  war  for  communication  between 
the  ground  and  the  air;  it  will  be  used  to  a 
greater  extent  in  the  next  few  years. 

Another  development  which  is  being  used 
by  the  navigators  flying  the  Atlantic  is  the 
radio  compass.  This  instrument  may  be 
turned  toward  a  land  or  sea  wireless  station, 
of  which  the  call  is  known,  and  it  will  register 
the  bearing  from  the  flying-boat  to  this 
station.  It  may  be  turned  upon  another 
station,  and  this  bearing  also  charted.  The 
intersection  of  these  two  wireless  compass 
bearings  gives  the  position  of  the  ship  at 
sea.  The  radio  compass  is  dependable  day 
or  night,  and  is  said  to  be  quite  as  reliable 
as  a  sextant  or  other  navigating  instruments. 

Sailmakers  to  repair  airplane  fabrics,  to 
sew  new  covers  for  planes — these  men  must 
find  an  opportunity  in  flying.  There  are 
literally  thousands  of  wings,  as  yet  unmade, 
which  will  carry  the  air  traffic  of  the  future. 
It  matters  not  whether  men  or  women  take 
up  this  branch  of  the  work,  it  must  be  done, 
and  done  with  a  conscience.  Like  all  other 
branches  of  the  mechanical  maintenance  of 
an  airplane,  careless  work  on  the  part  of  a 
sailmaker  may  mean  disaster  for  the  pilot. 
One  of  the  latest  fatalities  at  a  Long  Island 

58 


AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

flying-field  was  due  to  careless  stitching,  or 
weakness  of  fabric,  which  gave  way  under 
great  pressure  due  to  high  speed.  The 
linen  cover  of  an  upper  plane  ripped  off  at  a 
height  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet,  and  the 
pilot  was  killed  in  the  fall  of  the  machine. 

Photographers  may  yet  take  the  place  of 
surveyors,  or  work  hand  in  hand  with  them 
in  the  making  of  aerial  maps  of  the  country. 
The  map  of  the  future  must  be  an  aerial 
map,  a  mosaic  map  such  as  was  used  by  our 
army  headquarters.  Nothing  can  exceed 
the  eye  of  the  camera  for  accuracy.  Cameras 
bolted  to  airplanes,  such  as  were  used  by 
our  army  for  reconnaissance,  have  already 
been  used  for  mapping  cities.  The  mapping 
of  the  entire  country  in  such  a  manner  is 
only  a  matter  of  tune. 

One  thing  which  an  aviation  mechanic 
of  any  sort  must  bear  in  mind  is  that  he 
must  do  his  work  with  a  conscience.  True, 
he  is  handling  mute  metal  engines,  or  dumb 
wires  and  struts — but  in  his  work  he  holds 
the  life  of  the  pilot  in  his  hand.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  hundreds  of  pilots'  lives 
have  been  saved  by  the  conscientious  work 
of  skilled  mechanics  who  realized  the  danger 
of  the  air. 

I  have  seen  mechanics  rush  from  a  hangar 

59 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

in  a  frenzy  of  excitement  and  agitation. 
"That  machine  must  not  go  up;  it  has  been 
repaired,  but  not  inspected!"  They  have 
done  their  work  with  a  will  in  the  army; 
they  have  learned  some  of  the  dangers  of 
flying  and  weak  spots  which  must  be  watched. 
The  civilian  mechanic  must  be  taught  many 
things. 

First  of  all  he  must  know  the  value  of 
inspection.  Every  machine  which  has  gone 
through  a  workshop  must  be  inspected  and 
checked  over  by  a  skilled  mechanic  before 
a  pilot  is  allowed  to  fly  it.  The  ideal  thing 
would  be  to  have  legislation  licensing  the 
inspectors  of  aircraft  and  requiring  that 
repairs  on  all  machines  be  examined  by  a 
licensed  inspector.  The  inspectors  would  be 
under  civil  service  and  would  be  selected  by 
competitive  examination.  It  may  sound 
fantastic,  but  such  precautions  are  as  neces- 
sary for  the  preservation  of  life  as  legislation 
on  sanitary  matters. 

In  the  second  place,  there  should  be  time 
limits  placed  by  law  covering  the  period  of 
usefulness  of  various  parts  of  an  airplane. 
After  fifty  hours  of  flying  there  should  be  an 
inspection  of  certain  working  parts  of  the 
engine,  certain  wires  in  the  body  which  may 

be  strained  by  bad  landings,  and  other  wires 
60 


AIRPLANE  MECHANIC 

in  the  rigging  strained  by  flying  in  bad 
weather.  New  wires  are  always  sagging 
and  stretching  a  bit.  Wings  will  "wash 
out,"  lose  their  usefulness  by  excessive 
flying,  and  must  be  replaced.  There  is 
a  great  volume  of  data  on  these  matters 
which  should  be  the  basis  for  laws  covering 
mechanical  inspection  of  airplanes,  and  with 
which  the  airplane  mechanic  must  become 
familiar. 

For  the  man  who  would  like  to  work  into 
the  piloting  of  aircraft  there  is  a  very  good 
opportunity  by  starting  with  the  mechanical 
side.  Too  many  pilots  know  next  to  nothing 
about  the  construction  of  their  machines. 
When  an  engine  goes  bad  they  know  that 
it  won't  run — that  is  all.  The  pilot  who  is 
a  good  mechanic  is  a  gifted  man  in  his 
profession. 

There  are  endless  opportunities  at  flying- 
fields  for  mechanics  who  want  to  learn  to 
fly.  During  the  war  it  became  customary 
to  take  mechanics  up  for  flying  at  least  once 
in  two  weeks  on  some  fields.  It  gave  the 
mechanic  an  interest  in  his  work  and  an 
interest  in  the  life  of  his  pilot.  Perhaps 
nothing  stimulated  accurate  work  by  a 
mechanic  more  than  the  knowledge  that  at 
any  tune  he  might  be  called  upon  to  ride 

61 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

in  one  of  the  planes  he  had  helped  make 
or  repair. 

Some  were  taught  flying  by  their  officers, 
and  later  qualified  as  pilots.  Others  went 
through  as  cadets  and  became  pilots  after 
the  regular  course.  The  pilot  of  the  future 
must  learn  the  mechanical  side,  and  the 
mechanic  should  be  a  good  pilot.  The  two 
must  go  hand  in  hand  to  make  flying  a 
success. 


VI 

THE  FIRST  CROSSING  OF  THE  ATLANTIC 

HTHE  story  of  the  American  triumph  in 
A  being  the  first  to  fly  from  the  New  World 
to  the  Old  World  is  a  story  of  careful,  pains- 
taking, organized  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
American  navy.  With  the  flight  of  Lieut.- 
Commander  Albert  C.  Read  from  Rockaway 
Naval  Air  Station  to  Plymouth,  England, 
nearly  four  thousand  five  hundred  land  miles, 
the  navy  brought  to  fulfilment  plans  which 
had  been  maturing  for  two  years.  Since 
1917  there  have  been  naval  flying-officers 
anxious  to  cross  the  ocean  by  air,  and  their 
plans  have  been  cast  and  recast  from  time 
to  time.  At  first  there  were  many  reasons 
why  it  was  impossible  to  attempt  such  a 
thing  while  the  United  States  was  at  war. 
Destroyers,  busily  hunting  German  sub- 
marines, could  not  be  spared  for  a  feat  more 
spectacular  than  useful  at  the  time.  Pilots 
and  mechanics  could  not  be  spared  from  the 
business  at  hand — training  hundreds  of  sea- 
plane pilots  for  service  overseas. 

63 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

American  efforts  to  cross  the  Atlantic  by 
air  date  back  to  the  spring  of  1914  when  the 
flying-boat  America  was  built  to  the  order 
of  Rodman  Wanamaker.  She  was  a  large 
seaplane,  a  new  departure  in  her  time,  and 
represented  the  combined  effort  of  a  number 
of  the  best  seaplane  designers  in  the  world. 
Lieut.  John  C.  Porte,  of  the  Royal  Navy, 
came  over  from  England  to  be  pilot  of  the 
boat,  and  after  her  tests  hi  August  she  was 
to  have  made  her  flight.  But  Porte  was 
recalled  by  his  government  at  the  outbreak 
of  war  and  the  project  given  up. 

In  the  latter  half  of  1918  the  naval  sea- 
plane NC-1  was  delivered  to  the  Rockaway 
Naval  Air  Station — the  largest  seaplane 
ever  built  on  this  side  of  the  water.  She  was 
originally  planned,  with  three  sister  ships,  as 
an  aerial  submarine-chaser.  One  hundred 
and  twenty-six  feet  from  wing-tip  to  wing- 
tip,  she  was  equipped  with  three  big  Liberty 
motors — a  monster  seaplane,  ideally  suited 
to  the  purpose  for  which  she  was  designed. 

The  signing  of  the  armistice  interfered 
with  her  use  as  a  submarine  scout,  and  naval 
plans  for  crossing  the  ocean  in  the  air  were 
brought  from  their  pigeonholes.  The  NC-1 
and  her  sister  ships  under  construction  ap- 
peared to  have  been  built  for  just  such  a 
64 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

flight.  When  the  war  ended,  the  navy  as  a 
whole,  and  the  naval  air  service  in  particular, 
concentrated  attention  on  the  possibilities  of 
using  the  NC  planes  for  the  flight.  One  of 
the  first  decisions  made  was  to  increase  the 
engine  power  by  adding  a  fourth  engine, 
and  to  enlarge  the  gasolene-tanks  for  a  long 
flight. 

Early  in  March  of  this  year  it  became 
apparent  that  the  spring  or  early  summer 
would  see  several  attempts  to  cross  the  ocean 
by  air.  On  March  19th  it  was  reported  from 
England  that  the  unfortunate  Sopwith  ma- 
chine with  its  lucky  team  of  Harry  G. 
Hawker  and  Lieut.-Commander  Mackenzie 
Grieve  had  started  from  England  for  New- 
foundland. At  the  same  time  announce- 
ment was  made  that  naval  officers  had  been 
conferring  over  their  Atlantic  flight  plans, 
and  that  a  start  would  be  attempted  some 
time  in  May. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  great  deal  of  work 
had  been  done  in  secret  by  Commander 
John  H.  Towers,  Lieut.-Commander  Albert 
C.  Read,  and  Lieut.-Commander  Patrick 
N.  L.  Bellinger.  As  early  as  February  24th 
a  conference  was  held  in  Washington  and  a 
date  of  May  15th  or  16th  for  the  flight  from 
Newfoundland  was  set.  This  date  coin- 

65 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

cided  with  a  full  moon  over  the  North 
Atlantic,  and  the  machines  started  May  16th 
from  Trepassey. 

There  were  really  only  three  routes  open 
to  pilots  anxious  to  make  the  first  crossing 
of  the  Atlantic.  There  was  the  flight  straight 
from  Newfoundland  to  Ireland,  a  matter  of 
about  one  thousand  nine  hundred  miles 
of  straight  flying,  with  the  possibility  of 
favoring  winds.  There  was  the  Newfound- 
land-Azores route  which  the  Americans  took, 
and  the  route  from  Dakar,  French  Senegal, 
to  Pernambuco,  Brazil,  which  French  fliers 
attempted.  In  addition  there  was  the  pos- 
sibility of  flight  from  Ireland  to  Newfound- 
land, given  up  by  Major  Woods,  pilot  of 
the  Short  biplane,  after  his  forced  landing 
in  the  Irish  Sea. 

The  great  question  of  a  flight  straight 
across  the  Atlantic  was  that  of  fuel  con- 
sumption. Could  a  machine  be  devised 
which  would  carry  enough  fuel  to  fly  across 
one  thousand  nine  hundred  miles  of  water? 
The  Sopwith  Aviation  Company  designed 
their  machine  for  such  a  flight,  but  sent  it 
out  to  Newfoundland  to  catch  and  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  prevailing  west  winds  across 
the  North  Atlantic.  The  story  of  the  six 
weeks'  wait  for  favorable  weather,  and  the 

66 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

desperate  take-off  to  beat  the  American 
plane,  the  NC-4,  at  the  Azores,  make  it 
appear  doubtful  whether  such  winds  are  to 
be  relied  upon. 

The  American  planes  took  advantage  of 
those  winds  in  their  flight  to  the  Azores, 
that  much  is  certain.  But  they  were  well 
protected  with  destroyers,  were  not  pushing 
their  planes  to  the  limit,  and  did  not  depend 
upon  favoring  winds.  That  the  NC-1  and 
the  NC-3  reached  the  Azores,  but  did  not 
make  safe  landings  in  the  harbor  after  their 
long  flight,  is  one  of  the  fortunes  of  flying 
which  must  not  reflect  upon  the  American 
effort  as  a  whole. 

The  French  route  which  Lieutenant  Fon- 
tan,  of  the  French  army,  tried  twice,  and  on 
which  he  was  twice  forced  to  land  because  of 
engine  trouble,  was  laid  to  take  advantage  of 
favoring  winds.  Across  the  South  Atlantic 
the  winds  prevail  in  the  spring  of  the  year 
from  east  to  west,  contrary  to  the  winds  on 
the  northern  course.  A  twenty-mile  wind 
at  the  back  of  a  flier  jumping  the  one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  miles  across  this  bit  of 
water  would  add  just  twenty  miles  an  hour 
to  the  ground  speed  of  the  machine. 

Capt.  John  Alcock  and  Lieut.  Arthur 
Whitten  Brown  startled  the  entire  world 
6  67 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

on  June  15,  1919,  with  the  success  of  their 
straight  flight  from  Newfoundland  to  Ire- 
land, covering  1,960  land  miles  in  16  hours 
and  12  minutes,  at  an  average  speed  of  120 
miles  an  hour.  Not  only  was  this  the 
longest  non-stop  flight  over  land  or  water 
on  record,  but  the  greatest  international 
sporting  event.  As  such,  though  credit  for 
the  first  flight  of  the  Atlantic  belongs  to 
the  American  NC-4,  it  eclipses  for  daring 
the  flight  of  the  American  navy.  The 
Vickers-Vimy  plane  left  St.  John's,  New- 
foundland, on  June  14th,  at  4.29  P.M., 
Greenwich  mean  time,  and  landed  at  Clifden, 
Ireland,  on  June  15th,  at  8.40  A.M.,  Green- 
wich mean  time.  The  machine  was  equipped 
with  two  375-horse-power  Rolls-Royce  Eagle 
engines,  and  had  a  wing  span  of  67  feet  and 
measured  42  feet  8  inches  over  all. 

The  start  of  the  American  fliers  was  made 
after  a  series  of  tests  of  the  seaplanes  which 
covered  a  period  of  almost  two  months. 
At  the  outset  it  was  decided  to  fly  three  out 
of  the  four  NC  planes,  on  the  theory  that 
one  of  the  machines  would  probably  prove 
to  be  weaker  or  less  easy  to  handle  than  the 
others.  The  NC-2  proved  to  be  the  un- 
fortunate sister  in  this  case,  and  because  of 
some  defects  in  the  arrangement  of  her 

68 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

engine-bearing  struts  she  was  dismantled 
and  left  behind. 

With  the  decision  to  start  three  planes 
simultaneously,  the  navy  made  it  clear 
that,  although  it  hoped  all  three  seaplanes 
might  complete  the  trip,  allowance  was  made 
for  one  or  two  machines  to  give  up  the  flight 
if  they  found  themselves  in  trouble. 

The  NC-1,  and  NC-3,  and  the  NC-4  all 
proved  to  be  up  to  expectations,  and,  with 
increased  engine  power,  showed  that  they  could 
take-off  the  water  with  a  load  of  twenty-eight 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds.  After  the 
necessary  tests  had  been  made  on  Jamaica 
Bay,  Commander  Towers  said  on  May  4th 
that  the  start  would  be  made  a  little  after 
daybreak,  May  6th.  There  remained  only 
the  task  of  filling  their  hulls  with  one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  gallons  of  gasolene. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  May  5th,  while 
mechanics  were  pumping  gasolene  into  the 
tanks  of  the  NC-1,  a  spark  from  an  electric 
pump  fell  into  a  pool  of  gasolene  and  set  fire 
to  her  whole  right  side.  In  a  moment  the 
heavily  " doped"  linen  wings,  with  seasoned 
spruce  spars,  were  a  mass  of  hot  flame.  The 
sailors  at  work  on  the  machine,  with  com- 
plete disregard  of  their  personal  safety,  ran 
for  fire-extinguishers,  and  with  the  fire  burn- 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

ing  around  the  mouth  of  the  open  tanks, 
confined  it  to  the  right  wings  of  the  machine 
and  to  the  elevators  of  the  NC-4  standing 
close  by.  No  one  believed  that  the  NC-1 
could  be  made  ready  in  time  for  the  flight 
twenty-four  hours  away. 

She  was  ready  the  next  morning,  with 
fresh  wings  from  the  discarded  NC-2,  but 
the  flight  was  postponed  on  account  of  a 
heavy  northeast  wind,  reported  all  the  way 
to  Halifax.  The  machines  made  their  start 
from  Rockaway  on  the  morning  of  May  8th, 
at  ten  o'clock,  and  two  of  them,  the  NC-1, 
with  Lieutenant-Commander  Bellinger,  and 
the  NC-3,  with  Commander  Towers,  arrived 
at  Halifax  after  nine  hours'  flying.  The 
NC-4  proved  to  be  the  "lame  duck"  on  the 
first  leg  of  the  flight,  and  came  down  at  sea 
a  hundred  miles  off  Chatham,  because  of 
overheated  bearings.  Some  alarm  was  felt 
during  the  night  by  the  failure  of  destroyers 
to  find  her.  She  appeared  the  next  morning 
off  the  Chatham  breakwater,  "taxi-ing" 
under  her  own  power. 

While  her  sister  ships,  the  NC-1  and  the 
NC-3,  were  flying  to  Trepassey  the  NC-4 
waited  at  Chatham.  Even  after  the  repairs 
were  made,  it  seemed  impossible  for  the 

NC-4  to  catch  up  with  the  other  two  ma- 
70 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

chines,  and  she  was  held  stormbound  for 
five  days.  On  May  14th  she  finally  got  away 
from  Chatham,  and,  with  her  new  engines, 
made  the  fastest  time  over  the  short  course 
to  Halifax  recorded  since  the  beginning  of 
the  flight.  Her  average  for  the  320  miles 
was  85  nautical  miles  an  hour,  about  20 
miles  an  hour  faster  time  than  either  of  the 
other  two  machines  had  made. 

Four  days  later  she  left  Halifax  for  Tre- 
passey  in  a  last-minute  effort  to  catch  her 
sister  planes.  It  seemed  certain  that  she 
could  not  get  there  in  time  and  would  be 
forced  to  follow  on  the  course  a  day  later. 
Just  as  she  flew  into  Trepassey  Bay,  on  May 
14th,  the  NC-1  and  NC-3  were  preparing  to 
take-off.  They  postponed  their  start  until 
the  next  day.  In  the  mean  while  repairs 
were  rushed  and  adjustments  made,  and  she 
was  ready  to  start  the  next  afternoon,  when 
all  three  planes  started  a  little  after  six 
o'clock. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  flight  from 
Trepassey  the  NC-4,  thought  to  be  the 
"lame  duck"  of  the  squadron,  ran  away 
from  the  other  two  machines.  She  lost  con- 
tact with  them  very  quickly  and  plowed 
through  the  night  alone,  laying  her  course  by 

the  line  of  destroyers  lying  beneath  her. 
71 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

She  was  about  half  an  hour  ahead  of  the 
NC-1  at  daybreak  the  next  day  and  within 
an  easy  run  of  Horta,  Fayal. 

The  half-hour  lead  gave  the  NC-4  a  chance 
to  get  through  a  fog  which  was  coming  up 
over  the  Azores  ahead  of  the  other  machines. 
She  held  a  little  above  it  until  she  thought  she 
was  in  the  right  position.  Then  she  came 
down  through  the  mist.  As  it  happened, 
she  landed  in  the  wrong  harbor,  but  picked 
herself  up  and  found  Horta  a  few  minutes 
later.  She  landed  in  Horta  after  fifteen 
hours  and  eighteen  minutes  of  flying,  in 
which  she  averaged  78.4  nautical  miles  an 
hour  for  the  flight. 

The  machine  was  nearly  five  hours  ahead 
of  the  schedule  laid  down  by  the  Navy  De- 
partment. 

Both  the  other  planes  were  forced  to  land 
at  sea,  the  NC-3  after  1,250  miles  of  flight— 
the  longest  ever  made  over  water  up  to 
that  time — and  the  NC-1  after  more  than 
1,100  miles  in  the  air. 

The  NC-1  with  Bellinger  and  his  crew 
was  picked  up  on  the  morning  of  Saturday, 
May  17th,  by  a  Greek  steamer,  the  Ionia, 
and  brought  into  Horta.  Towers  with  the 
NC-3  tossed  about  for  nearly  sixty  hours  at 
sea  and  was  not  picked  up  until  the  following 

72 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

Monday,  when  the  public  had  begun  to  fear 
for  his  safety. 

On  Tuesday,  May  20th,  the  NC-4  hopped 
off  for  the  shortest  leg  of  the  flight,  150  miles 
from  Horta  to  Ponta  Delgada,  where  the  fuel 
and  supplies  for  the  machines  were.  With 
favoring  winds  at  her  back,  and  with  the 
lightest  load  she  had  carried,  she  covered 
the  distance  in  one  hour  and  forty-four 
minutes,  an  average  speed  of  86.7  nautical 
miles  an  hour,  or  more  than  99  land  miles. 
This  was  a  new  record  for  the  seaplanes  on 
the  ocean  flight. 

Meanwhile  Harry  G.  Hawker  and  Lieut.- 
Commander  Mackenzie  Grieve,  the  Sopwith 
team  waiting  so  long  at  St.  John's  for  a  chance 
to  fly,  stimulated  in  their  daring  attempt 
by  reports  of  American  successes  at  the 
Azores,  took-off  on  then-  flight  straight  across 
on  the  afternoon  of  Sunday,  May  18th.  All 
through  that  night  he  flew,  when  his  engine 
began  to  give  signs  of  overheating,  due  to  a 
clogged  water-filter.  Early  the  next  morn- 
ing, about  half-way  across,  Hawker  decided 
that  there  was  no  chance  to  make  the  land, 
and  began  looking  through  the  fog  for  a 
chance  for  a  safe  landing. 

By  zigzagging  on  the  steamship  courses 

for  about  two  hours,  with  his  engine  hot  but 
73 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

running  well,  he  picked  up  the  Danish 
steamer  Mary,  and  pancaked  on  the  water 
about  two  miles  ahead  of  her.  Because 
the  little  tramp  steamer  had  no  wireless, 
the  world  was  kept  waiting  a  week,  before 
word  was  signaled  to  land  that  Hawker  and 
Grieve  were  safe. 

With  the  Sopwith  team  out  of  the  race, 
it  became  evident  that  Commander  Read 
and  the  NC-4  would  actually  win  the  honors 
for  the  first  flight.  On  the  morning  of  May 
27th  he  started  over  his  well-patrolled  course 
of  eight  hundred  miles,  and,  after  a  little 
less  than  ten  hours  of  flight,  brought  his 
machine  into  the  harbor  before  Lisbon, 
Portugal.  Americans  had  crossed  the  ocean 
in  the  air,  and  the  enthusiastic  Portuguese 
capital  turned  out  to  do  them  every  honor. 

Read,  however,  rather  than  linger,  pushed 
on  again  May  30th,  in  the  midst  of  the 
celebration  for  his  triumph  on  the  last  leg 
of  his  course  to  Plymouth,  seven  hundred  and 
seventy-five  nautical  miles.  Engine  trouble, 
the  first  since  the  machine  had  left  Chatham, 
developed,  and  at  the  end  of  two  hours  he 
was  forced  to  land  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mondego  River,  about  a  hundred  miles  on 
his  way.  The  trouble  was  a  water  leak. 
It  was  quickly  repaired,  and  he  started  again, 
74 


THE  TRANSATLANTIC  FLIGHT 

but  decided  to  put  up  at  Ferrol,  Spain,  two 
hundred  miles  farther  on  the  course,  for  the 
night. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  May  31st  Com- 
mander Read  started  from  Ferrol  for  Plym- 
outh, and  at  the  end  of  seven  hours  and 
six  minutes  of  flight  came  down  in  the  har- 
bor, where  a  warm  reception  was  waiting 
for  him.  The  actual  flying  time  since 
leaving  the  Rockaway  Naval  Air  Station 
was  fifty-seven  hours  and  sixteen  minutes, 
and  the  average  rate  of  flight  was  at  a  speed 
of  sixty-eight  nautical  miles  an  hour. 


VII 

LANDING-FIELDS— THE  IMMEDIATE  NEED 

THE  immediate  need,  to  establish  aviation 
throughout  the  entire  country,  is  a 
series  of  landing-fields  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific  coast.  These  landing-fields  should 
not  be  designed  primarily  for  transcontinen- 
tal flying-stations,  but  for  city-to-city  flying. 
There  is  going  to  be  a  great  amount  of  aerial 
traffic  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco, 
to  be  sure,  but  the  future  of  flying  is  in  the 
linking  up  of  cities  a  few  hundred  miles  apart. 
The  War  Department  has  already  taken 
steps,  and  will  establish  thirty-two  fields 
in  the  country  to  encourage  flying.  Many 
more  are  needed. 

Atlantic  City  is  apparently  the  pioneer 
air  port  of  the  country,  and  for  many  reasons 
this  is  natural.  There  are  political  and 
social  advantages  which  make  Atlantic  City 
ideal.  Rules  have  been  laid  down  for  the 
coming  and  going  of  airships,  and  a  field 
for  land  machines  and  water  space  for  sea- 
planes have  been  laid  out.  A  large  aero- 
76 


LANDING-FIELDS 

nautical  convention  has  already  been  held 
there. 

Every  city  in  the  United  States  will  have 
a  landing-field  and  hangars  for  airplanes,  as 
well  as  mechanics  to  care  for  them.  Whether 
this  is  to  be  a  private  or  public  enterprise 
lies  in  the  hands  of  the  people  handling  such 
things.  Much  could  be  said  for  either  type 
of  establishment.  The  thing  must  come; 
it  is  as  logical  as  one,  -two,  three.  There  are 
some,  perhaps,  who  remember  the  roars  of 
derision  which  went  up  when  the  first  auto- 
mobile garage  was  established  in  their  town. 
Such  a  thing  was  visionary — there  would 
never  be  enough  machines  to  make  it  pay! 

There  are  many  reasons  why  it  is  impos- 
sible to  consider  the  use  of  city  roofs,  for 
the  present,  as  suitable  landing-places  for 
airplanes.  In  fact,  the  first  successful  land- 
ing on  a  roof  made  by  Jules  Vedrines  last 
January  was  hailed  as  a  feat  of  almost  un- 
paralleled daring.  He  flew  and  landed  on 
the  roof  of  the  Galeries  Lafayette  in  Paris, 
and  won  a  prize  of  $5,000  for  doing  it.  The 
police  of  Paris  refused  to  allow  him  to  fly 
off  the  roof,  and  he  was  compelled  to  take 
his  machine  apart  and  lower  it  in  an  elevator. 

The  theory  of  flight,  the  laws  which  make 

it  possible  apparently  to  defy  all  laws  of 

77 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

gravitation,  make  it  impossible  for  us  to 
depend  on  the  roofs  of  buildings  in  large 
cities  and  landing-places.  It  will  be  a  long 
time  before  the  dreams  of  men  who  would 
establish  landing-places  on  hotel  roofs  can 
come  true.  The  progress  of  aeronautical 
development  has  been  great  enough  so  that 
there  is  no  need  to  overemphasize  it — to 
set  ridiculous  tasks  which  cannot  be  accom- 
plished. 

We  shall  not  see  the  business  man  flying 
to  his  office  in  the  city  from  his  country 
estate — unless  some  landing-field  is  built 
on  the  lower  end  of  Manhattan  Island  as 
has  been  proposed.  The  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce of  the  State  of  New  York  has  taken 
up  the  matter  of  legislation  to  make  landing- 
fields  possible,  and  it  must  go  through. 
The  business  man  ought,  in  the  near  future, 
to  be  able  to  use  the  airplane  for  quick  trips 
to  Albany.  It  would  save  hours  over  rail 
time,  and  here  the  airplane  has  a  wonderful 
field  of  usefulness. 

Airplanes  have  made  the  trip  from  Wash- 
ington to  New  York  in  very  quick  time, 
only  to  have  to  go  on  to  Mineola  to  land  on 
the  airdrome  there.  It  takes  nearly  an  hour 
to  come  in  from  Mineola,  but  even  at  that 

the  saving  of  time  is  still  considerable.    The 

78 


LANDING-FIELDS 

speed  and  efficiency  of  airplane  travel  to 
and  from  New  York  and  other  cities  is 
materially  affected  by  the  lack  of  landing- 
fields  close  to  the  business  section  of  the 
city. 

There  must  be  a  large  field,  broad  in  every 
dimension,  to  permit  the  landing  and  taking- 
off  of  airplanes.  A  machine  must  get  up 
flying  speed  running  across  the  ground  before 
it  gets  into  the  air.  The  flying  speed  varies 
with  the  type  of  machine,  and  it  may  be  esti- 
mated that  most  machines  fcake-off  and  land 
at  a  speed  of  from  forty-five  to  sixty  miles 
an  hour.  The  air  must  be  passing  through 
their  planes  at  this  speed  before  they  will 
begin  to  fly,  and  it  takes  a  little  run  to  get 
up  flying  speed.  Similarly,  when  an  air- 
plane lands,  it  must  lose  its  flying  speed 
gradually.  It  may  glide  to  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  ground,  and  then  "  flat  ten  out" 
just  off  the  ground  and  run  along  until  it 
loses  its  speed,  the  air  no  longer  passes  over 
its  planes  fast  enough  to  support  it,  and  it 
drops  to  the  ground. 

Such  are  the  limitations  which  the  neces- 
sity for  speed  in  airplane  flight  imposes. 
Compare  the  paper  dart  flying  through  the 
air.  As  long  as  it  moves  quickly  it  will  fly. 

Or  a  kite,  that  will  fly  when  the  wind  is 
79 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

strong  enough.  The  airplane  creates  its  own 
wind  to  support  itself. 

There  are  four  forces  acting  on  an  airplane 
in  flight,  and  they  must  be  properly  over- 
come and  balanced.  There  is  lift,  the  up- 
ward force  exerted  on  the  planes  by  the 
passage  of  air  over  their  surfaces;  and  drift, 
the  resistance  to  the  passing  of  an  airplane, 
the  retarding  force  acting  opposite  to  the  di- 
rection of  motion.  Then  thrust,  the  forward 
effort  of  a  machine  exerted  by  a  propeller 
pushing  or  pulling.  And  finally  gravity. 

The  primary  conditions  of  flight  are  that 
lift  made  by  the  planes  shall  be  equal  to  the 
force  of  gravity,  and  that  the  forward  thrust 
must  be  equal  to  the  drift.  At  that  point 
a  machine  will  sustain  flight — a  fairly  simple 
thing  on  paper.  But  the  times  that  machines 
have  stalled  in  the  air,  with  their  motors  full 
on  because  their  pilots  have  failed  to  sus- 
tain flight,  have  let  the  force  of  gravity  over- 
come lift,  are  too  numerous  to  mention. 

That  dart,  if  pointed  at  a  proper  angle 
and  let  loose,  will  fly;  its  lift  will  overcome 
the  force  of  gravity,  even  though  it  has  no 
motive  power  of  its  own.  An  airplane  with- 
out an  engine  could  be  pushed  off  the  Pali- 
sades at  flying  speed,  and  a  skilful  pilot  could 
bring  it  to  a  reasonably  safe  landing  at  the 
80 


LANDING-FIELDS 

foot.  Flight  does  depend  on  motion,  but 
motion  does  not  depend  on  motive  power. 
Given  a  sufficiently  high  altitude,  the  mere 
act  of  dropping  through  the  air  creates 
motion,  and  this  motion  will  sustain  flight. 

An  airplane  is  in  no  particular  danger 
in  the  air  if  the  motor  stops — provided  it 
is  in  an  open  stretch  of  country  with  plenty 
of  fields.  Instinctively  the  pilot  will  nose 
down  and  glide,  and  on  that  glide  he  will 
find  himself  maintaining  flying  speed.  He 
can  turn  and  maneuver  his  machine,  and 
pick  out  almost  any  field  near  at  hand.  The 
only  limitations  are  that  he  cannot  glide  more 
than  five  times  his  height,  and  when  he 
comes  down  to  the  ground  he  must  stop 
gliding  and  land.  He  must  land  on  any- 
thing that  presents  itself,  a  field  if  he  has 
good  judgment;  if  not,  then  a  barn  or  swamp 
or  woods.  He  must  land  when  the  end  of 
his  glide  brings  him  to  the  ground. 

This  is  commonly  termed  a  "forced  land- 
ing/ '  and  in  every  sense  of  the  word  it  is 
one.  There  is  no  pilot  of  any  extensive 
flying  experience  who  has  not  had  to  make  a 
forced  landing.  Ninety  out  of  a  hundred 
are  perfectly  orderly  safe  landings;  the  odd 
ones  are  occasionally  crashes.  Incidentally 
it  may  be  said  that  forced-landing  practice 

81 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

by  flying  pupils  is  the  most  beneficial  which 
may  be  imagined.  It  teaches  control  over 
a  machine  as  nothing  else  will.  It  may  be 
carried  out  from  any  height,  shutting  off 
the  motor,  picking  out  a  field,  gliding  for  it, 
turning  and  twisting  to  get  into  proper  posi- 
tion as  regards  the  wind,  and  "  giving  her 
the  gun"  just  at  the  fence  and  flying  on. 

A  forced  landing  over  the  country  is  safe, 
but  over  a  city  it  is  the  most  deaolly  thing 
imaginable.  For  a  machine  caught  with  a 
"dud"  engine  over  New  York  there  is  no 
escape  but  a  terrific  crash  in  the  city  streets, 
against  the  side  of  some  building,  with 
danger  to  the  pilot  and  the  people  in  the 
street  below.  There  has  been  no  motor 
made  by  the  hand  of  man  which  would  not 
let  a  pilot  down  at  some  unexpected  time. 
The  instance  of  Major  Woods,  starting  on 
his  flight  across  the  Atlantic,  and  forced  to 
come  down  to  the  Irish  Sea  is  one  example. 
The  NC-4,  American  naval  seaplane,  had  a 
forced  landing  at  sea,  a  hundred  miles  from 
Chatham,  Massachusetts,  on  the  first  leg 
of  the  Atlantic  flight  from  this  side.  Its 
engines  had  been  carefully  cleaned  and 
tested,  and  yet  they  failed.  Harry  G. 
Hawker's  engine  failed  him  half-way  from 
Newfoundland  to  Ireland  and  let  him  down 

82 


LANDING-FIELDS 

into  the  sea,  from  which  he  was  picked  up 
by  the  greatest  good  luck. 

That  is  one  of  the  most  exasperating  and 
human  things  about  a  gasolene-engine.  It 
is  efficient,  but  not  thoroughly  dependable. 
The  best  of  them  are  liable  to  break  down 
at  the  most  needed  moment,  due  to  a  hundred 
causes  outside  of  the  control  of  a  mechanic 
or  pilot.  Care  and  rigid  inspection  will 
reduce  the  possibilities,  but  engine  failure 
cannot  yet  be  eliminated. 

That  is  one  of  the  principal  reasons  why 
the  roofs  of  buildings  around  big  cities  are 
so  dangerous.  The  sides  of  a  building  drop 
away  from  the  roof.  An  error  in  judgment 
and  the  machine  is  over  the  edge. 

It  is  even  more  dangerous  to  take-off. 
An  airplane  motor  is  ten  times  as  likely  to 
develop  a  weakness  while  it  is  cold.  A 
motor  starting  a  flight  is  never  well  warmed 
up,  and  fifty  feet  from  the  edge  of  the  roof 
it  may  give  out,  with  awful  consequences. 
As  a  practicable  thing,  roofs  are  at  present 
impossible.  There  is  not  a  flying-officer  in 
the  world  who  will  not  agree. 

An  interesting  series  of  experiments  has 
been  carried  out  in  England  on  what  has  been 
known  as  the  helicopter  machine.  This 

machine  is  not  dependent  upon  speed  to  fly, 

7  83 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

but  merely  on  engine  power  applied  through 
a  propeller  of  great  pitch.  The  idea  is  not 
new,  but  is  along  the  lines  specified  by 
Orville  Wright  when  he  said  that  a  kitchen 
table  could  fly  if  it  had  a  good  enough  engine. 

The  effort  is  being  made  to  make  a  machine 
which  can  hover,  can  hold  itself  in  the  air 
by  brute  force  of  its  propeller  blades  beat- 
ing the  air.  The  thing  sounds  impossible 
to  adapt,  say  some  aeronautical  engineers. 
Those  who  have  seen  the  experiments, 
however,  express  great  optimism. 

A  machine  of  this  sort  would  land  and 
take-off  in  a  very  small  space,  and  might  be 
adapted  to  use  around  cities.  It  might  even 
make  flying  over  cities  safe  but  for  the 
human  equation  of  the  engine  again.  This 
machine  is  dependent  on  engine  power.  Ap- 
parently there  would  be  two  engines,  or  two 
driving  mechanisms,  one  operating  the  lifting 
propeller  and  the  other  the  pulling  propeller. 

For  the  present  the  great  need  is  for  land- 
ing-fields as  near  the  heart  of  most  American 
cities  as  possible.  There  should  be  quick 
transportation  to  the  business  section  pro- 
vided, as  well  as  hangars  and  mechanics. 
When  that  is  done  we  may  very  well  say 
that  aerial  transportation  for  passengers 
and  freight  is  an  accomplished  fact. 

84 


VIII 

THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

AT  the  end  of  108  hours  and  12  minutes  of 
sustained  flight,  more  than  four  days,  the 
British  dirigible  R-34  swung  into  Roosevelt 
Field,  came  to  anchor,  and  finished  the  first 
flight  of  the  Atlantic  by  a  lighter-than-air 
airship.  To  the  wondering  throngs  which 
went  down  Long  Island  to  see  her  huge 
gray  bulk  swinging  lazily  in  the  wind,  with 
men  clinging  in  bunches,  like  centipedes,  to 
her  anchor  ropes,  and  her  red,  white,  and  blue- 
tipped  rudder  turning  idly,  she  was  more  than 
a  great  big  balloon,  but  a  forerunner  of  times 
to  come.  She  had  come  to  us,  a  pioneer  over 
the  sea  lanes  which  are  to  be  thronged  with 
the  swift  dirigibles  of  the  future  plying  then- 
easy  way  from  America  to  Europe. 

The  performance  of  the  R-34,  undertaken 
in  the  line  of  duty,  has  eclipsed  all  the  previ- 
ous records  made  by  dirigibles  and  is,  in  fact, 
a  promise  of  bigger  things  to  come.  There 

85 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

was  that  Zeppelin,  which  cruised  for  four 
days  and  nights  down  into  German  East 
Africa  and  out  again,  carrying  twenty-five 
tons  of  ammunition  and  medicine  for  the 
Germans  who  were  surrounded  and  obliged 
to  surrender  before  help  arrived. 

The  R-34  started  from  East  Fortune, 
Scotland,  on  Wednesday,  July  2,  1919,  at 
2.48  o'clock  in  the  morning,  British  summer 
time,  and  arrived,  after  an  adventurous  voy- 
age, at  Mineola,  ^Sunday,  July  6,  at  9.54 
A.M.,  American  summer  time.  She  had  clear 
sailing  until  she  hit  the  lower  part  of  Nova 
Scotia  on  Saturday.  Electrical  storms,  which 
the  dirigible  rode  out,  and  also  heavy  head 
winds,  kept  her  from  making  any  progress, 
and  used  up  the  gasolene.  About  noon  of 
Saturday  the  gasolene  situation  became  acute, 
and  Major  G.  H.  Scott,  her  commander,  sent 
a  wireless  message  to  the  United  States  Navy 
Department  at  Washington,  asking  for  de- 
stroyers to  stand  by  in  the  Bay  of  Fundy  in 
case  the  gasolene  should  run  short  and  the 
airship  get  out  of  control.  Destroyers  were 
immediately  despatched,  but  in  the  next  few 
hours  the  weather  improved,  and  the  ship 
was  able  to  continue  on  her  journey.  It  was 
feared,  however,  she  might  run  out  of  fuel 
before  reaching  Long  Island,  and  mechanics 

86 


THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

were  sent  to  Chatham  and  to  Boston  to  pick 
her  up  in  case  of  trouble. 

The  big  ship  surprised  everybody  by  ap- 
pearing over  Long  Island  about  nine  o'clock 
Sunday  morning.  The  officer  in  charge  of 
the  landing  party  having  gone  to  Boston, 
expecting  her  arrival  there,  Major  John 
Pritchard  " stepped  down"  in  a  parachute 
from  the  airship,  and,  landing  lightly,  took 
charge  of  the  landing  of  the  big  machine. 

An  approaching  cyclone,  which  would  have 
made  it  almost  impossible  to  handle  the  airship 
at  Mineola,  was  responsible  for  a  rather  hurried 
start  back  at  midnight  of  Wednesday,  July 
9th.  She  visited  Broadway  in  the  midst  of 
the  midnight  glare,  turned  over  Forty-second 
Street  a  little  after  one  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
and  put  out  to  sea  and  her  home  airdrome. 
The  voyage  back  was  mostly  with  favoring 
winds,  and  she  landed  at  Pulham,  the  airship 
station  in  Norfolk,  after  75  hours  and  3 
minutes  of  flight.  The  voyage  back  was 
practically  without  incident  except  for  the 
failure  of  one  engine,  which  in  no  way  held 
back  the  airship.  She  was  turned  off  her 
course  to  East  Fortune  by  reports  that  there 
were  storms  and  head  winds  which  might 
hold  her  back  in  case  she  kept  on  her  way. 

The  voyage  was  probably  the  most  signifi- 

87 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

cant  in  the  history  of  flying.  It  brought 
home  to  the  public  the  possibilities  of  the 
airship  for  ocean  commerce  as  nothing  else 
could  have  done.  The  ship  remained  in  the 
air  longer  than  any  previous  airship,  and 
pointed  the  way  clear  to  commercial  flying. 
It  is,  in  fact,  only  considered  a  matter  of 
time  before  companies  are  started  to  carry- 
passengers  and  mails  across  the  Atlantic  at 
a  price  that  would  offer  serious  competition 
to  the  fastest  steamships. 

The  airship  has  been  very  much  neglected 
by  popular  favor.  Its  physical  clumsiness, 
its  lack  of  sporting  competition  in  compari- 
son with  the  airplane  which  must  fight  to 
keep  itself  up  in  the  air,  its  lack  of  romance 
as  contrasted  with  that  of  the  airplane  in 
war,  have  all  tended  to  cast  somewhat  of  a 
shadow  over  the  lighter-than-air  vessel  and 
cause  the  public  to  pass  it  by  without  interest. 
It  is  a  very  real  fact,  therefore,  that  very 
few  people  realize  either  the  services  of  the 
airship  in  the  war  or  its  possibilities  for  the 
future. 

During  the  war  the  airship  was  invaluable 
in  the  ceaseless  vigil  for  the  submarine. 
England  early  stretched  a  cordon  of  airship 
guards  all  about  her  coasts  and  crippled  the 
U-boats'  work  thereby.  The  airship  had  a 

88 


THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

greater  range  of  vision  and  a  better  downward 
view  than  any  sea-vessel;  it  could  travel 
more  slowly,  watch  more  closely,  stay  out 
much  longer,  than  any  other  vessel  of  the  air. 
The  British  credit  their  airships  with  several 
successful  attacks  on  submarines,  but  they 
give  them  a  far  greater  place  in  causing  a 
fear  among  the  under-sea  boats  which  drove 
them  beneath  the  surface  and  greatly  limited 
their  efficiency. 

The  German  Zeppelins,  on  the  other  hand, 
stand  out  in  public  imagination  as  a  failure 
in  the  war,  especially  because  the  British 
shortly  established  an  airplane  barrage  which 
proved  to  be  their  masters.  This  view  is 
correct  only  in  so  far  as  it  applies  to  interior 
raiding,  for  which,  indeed,  the  Zeppelin  was 
not  designed.  How  untrue  it  is  of  the 
Zeppelin  as  the  outpost  for  the  German  fleet 
British  officers  will  readily  admit.  Indeed, 
they  credit  them  with  the  escape  of  the 
German  fleet  at  Jutland,  one  of  the  deepest 
regrets  in  British  naval  history.  As  eyes 
for  the  German  fleet  in  the  North  Sea,  the 
Zeppelins,  with  then-  great  cruising  range 
and  power  of  endurance,  proved  almost 
invaluable. 

Airships  have,  then,  behind  them  a  rich 
heritage  and  before  them  a  bright  future. 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

Much  work  that  the  airplane  can  do  they 
cannot  do;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  much 
work  that  they  can  do  the  airplane  cannot. 
The  two  services  are  essentially  different 
and  yet  essentially  complementary.  Be- 
tween them  they  offer  nearly  every  facility 
and  method  of  travel  in  the  air  which  could 
be  desired.  Each  must  be  equally  developed 
in  order  to  increase  the  efficiency  and  the 
value  of  the  other. 

The  great .  difference,  of  course,  between 
the  airplane  and  the  airship  is  that  the  former 
sustains  itself  as  a  heavier-than-air  vessel 
by  the  lifting  power  of  the  air  in  relation 
to  a  body  driven  hard  against  it  by  its  power- 
ful engines,  while  the  latter  sustains  itself 
as  a  lighter-than-air  body  because  of  the 
large  amount  of  air  displaced  by  a  huge 
envelop  loaded  with  gas  much  lighter  than 
the  air  itself.  The  contrast  is  obvious;  one 
vessel  is  small,  agile,  and  very  fast;  the 
other  is  slow  and  clumsy.  The  airship  can- 
not attain  anything  like  the  speed  of  the 
airplane,  nor  can  it  go  so  high  or  maneuver 
so  quickly,  but  on  the  other  hand,  at  least  for 
the  immediate  present,  it  can  stay  afloat  very 
much  longer  and  carry  much  greater  weight. 

Moreover,  the  airship  has  certain  other 
easily  perceptible  advantages  over  the  air- 

90 


THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

plane.  Ordinarily  an  airship  need  not  fly 
at  much  more  than  a  thousand  feet,  which 
not  only  makes  far  less  cold  traveling  than 
at  higher  altitudes,  but  also  allows  the  pas- 
sengers to  enjoy  the  view  far  better  than 
from  an  airplane,  whence  the  world  below 
looks  like  a  dull  contour  map.  An  airship 
also  flies  on  an  even  keel;  it  does  not  bank 
as  an  airplane  does  nor  does  it  climb  or 
descend  so  quickly. 

At  present  airship  travel  gives  a  greater 
feeling  of  comfort  and  security.  Sleeping 
is  a  calm  experience;  moving  about  com- 
paratively simple.  Also  there  is  less  noise 
than  in  an  airplane  where  the  engines  beat 
incessantly  and  the  wind  rushes  through  the 
wires  and  struts.  An  airship  has  no  wires 
and  can  at  the  same  time  slow  down  and 
even  shut  off  its  engine,  so  that  it  need 
be  no  more  noisy  than  a  motor-car.  Engine 
failure  also  is  not  so  serious  as  in  an  airplane, 
for  the  gas-bag  will  always  keep  the  ship  up 
until  there  has  been  a  chance  for  repairs. 

Up  to  the  present,  too,  the  airship  is  less 
of  a  fair-weather  flier  than  the  airplane. 
A  surprising  record  has  been  attained  in  the 
war  by  British  airships,  as  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  in  1918,  a  year  of  execrable  weather, 
there  where  only  nine  days  during  which 

91 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

their  vessels  were  not  up.  This  is,  of  course, 
in  considerable  contrast  to  airplanes  as  at 
present  developed,  but  it  may  reasonably  be 
expected  that  the  latter  will  very  soon  de- 
velop to  the  same  point  of  independence  of  the 
weather. 

Of  course,  the  great  difficulty  of  airships 
has  been  their  ungainly  size  and  the  difficulty 
of  housing  them.  The  sheds,  particularly 
those  for  the  Zeppelins,  have  been  most 
costly,  but  the  British  have  recently  de- 
veloped a  system  of  mooring  masts  which 
make  much  of  this  expense  unnecessary. 
If  such  a  device  can  be  successfully  put  into 
every-day  use  it  will  enormously  increase 
the  ease  of  loading  and  unloading  passengers, 
which  now  makes  for  considerable  discom- 
fort and  loss  of  time. 

Some  of  the  plans  for  future  airships  are 
unbelievable  to  one  who  has  not  followed 
their  development  carefully.  Already  there 
is  planned  in  England  a  monster  ship  known 
as  the  "ten  million,"  for  the  reason  that  it 
will  have  a  gas  capacity  of  ten  million  cubic 
feet,  over  four  times  that  of  the  largest 
Zeppelin.  The  length  is  placed  at  1,100 
feet,  the  speed  at  95  miles  an  hour,  the 
cruising  range  20,000  miles,  and  the  cost  at 
about  $1,000,000.  As  a  matter  of  actual 

92 


THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

practice,  however,  the  best  division  of  the 
space  and  lifting  power  of  this  airship  would 
be  for  it  to  carry  a  crew  of  about  20,  a  useful 
load  of  200  passengers  or  150  tons  of  mer- 
chandise, and  50  tons  of  petrol,  which  would 
give  it  a  non-stop  run  of  about  5,000  miles. 

Airship  travel  would  undoubtedly  be  ex- 
pensive. The  gas  alone  to  maintain  such 
a  vessel  as  described  is  expected  to  cost 
about  $30  an  hour,  which,  added  to  the 
original  investment  for  the  ship  and  its  house 
and  the  wages  of  the  crew  and  the  200  or 
more  skilled  men  at  each  station,  would 
come  up  to  a  high  figure.  At  the  same  time, 
the  airship  would  not  afford  the  element  of 
very  high  speed  which  is  so  certain  to  justify 
any  expense  which  may  have  to  be  put  into 
the  airplane.  Nevertheless,  with  the  im- 
provements that  are  sure  to  come,  with  the 
ability  to  reach  places  not  touched  by  other 
methods  of  travel,  the  freedom  from  all  the 
delays,  inconveniences,  and  expense  of  trans- 
shipment, this  preliminary  charge  will  be 
largely  compensated  for. 

Those  who  sponsor  the  airship  urge  that 
it  will  be  used  almost  exclusively  for  long- 
distance flights  beyond  the  range  of  the 
ordinary  airplane  and  very  little  for  short 
local  flights.  For  transatlantic  travel,  for 

93 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

instance,  it  is  being  particularly  pressed,  as 
ships  even  of  to-day  have  all  the  capacity 
for  such  a  voyage,  without  the  dangers  which 
might  surround  an  airplane  if  its  sustaining 
engine  power  were  to  give  out. 

There  are  several  records  which  would 
easily  justify  it.  Besides  the  flight  across  the 
Atlantic  by  the  R-34  and  the  four-day  trip 
of  the  German  airship  from  Bulgaria  to 
Africa  and  back,  a  British  airship  during 
the  war  stayed  up  for  50  hours  and  55 
minutes,  and  another,  just  after  the  armistice, 
stayed  up  for  61  hours.  An  American  naval 
dirigible  a  short  time  after  the  armistice 
made  a  flight  from  New  York  to  Key  West, 
1,200  miles,  at  40  miles  an  hour,  for  29^5 
hours,  with  one  stop  at  Hampton  Roads. 
As  an  example  of  some  of  the  difficulties  of 
airship  travel,  this  landing  was  possible 
only  after  the  ship  had  circled  the  town 
and  dropped  a  message  asking  the  people 
to  go  to  a  large  field  near  by  and  catch  the 
dirigible  drag-net  when  it  approached  the 
ground.  Even  at  that,  however,  the  time 
of  less  than  a  day  and  a  quarter  for  what  is 
usually  a  very  arduous  train  trip  from  New 
York  down  the  coast  to  Florida  gives  some 
indication  of  the  possibilities  of  this  method 

of  travel  when  properly  developed. 
94 


THE  AIRPLANE'S  BROTHER 

Practically  all  the  new  airships  contem- 
plated look  to  a  much  greater  speed  than 
the  pre-war  speed  of  about  40  miles  an 
hour.  It  is  not  at  all  uncertain  that  they 
will  not  run  up  as  high  as  100  miles,  though 
at  the  present  tune  that  figure  is  extreme. 
But  granted  that  they  no  more  than  double 
the  pre-war  speed  and  reach  the  actual 
figure  contemplated  of  about  75  miles  an 
hour,  they  still  would  triple  the  best  pas- 
senger-steamer speed,  which  would  make 
them  a  matter  of  the  utmost  importance  in 
all  long  ocean  voyages. 

Just  how  the  balance  will  be  struck  be- 
tween airplanes  and  airships  is  a  big  ques- 
tion. It  is  interesting  to  note,  however, 
that  the  supporters  of  the  airship  have 
worked  out  a  general  theory  that  the  lighter- 
than-air  vessel  with  its  already  demon- 
strated cruising  and  weight-carrying  capac- 
ity will  be  used  for  all  long  routes,  and  for 
that  almost  exclusively,  while  the  heavier- 
than-air  vessel,  with  its  great  speed  and 
facility  for  maneuvering,  will  be  used  for 
local  flights.  This,  in  their  viewpoint,  would 
mean  that  the  world  would  be  girded  by 
great  lanes  of  airships,  fed  from  a  few  main 
centers  by  swift-scurrying  airplanes  radiating 
in  from  every  direction. 
95 


IX 

THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

HTHE  day  of  the  air  has  undoubtedly  come. 
1  The  old  order  of  the  world  has  been 
entirely  changed.  A  new  life  is  breaking 
in  over  the  near  horizon.  Almost  in  a  mo- 
ment the  span  of  the  world  has  shrunk  to  a 
quarter  of  its  former  size,  so  that  where 
before  we  thought  in  terms  of  countries 
very  soon  we  must  think  in  terms  of  con- 
tinents. The  world  is  shortly  to  be  linked 
up  as  it  never  has  been  before,  till  the  great 
continents  are  brought  as  near  as  were  the 
near-by  nations  of  the  past  years. 

Any  one  who  doubts  the  future  of  aviation 
should  realize  the  helplessness  of  the  science 
after  the  armistice  because  of  the  complete 
lack  of  international  laws  to  make  possible 
its  application  in  Europe,  where  it  was  most 
highly  developed.  With  men  and  machines 
ready,  they  had  to  hold  to  the  ground  largely 
because  there  was  in  force  no  treaties  assur- 
es 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

ing  them  the  right  to  cross  frontiers.  The 
broad  plans  for  international  routes  were 
held  up  because  aviation  itself  was  so  big 
in  its  expanse  that  it  could  not  meet  its  just 
fulfilment  within  national  lines. 

As  a  result  a  new  law  must  be  written. 
The  law  of  the  ah-  will  be  one  of  the  most 
intricate  and  the  most  fascinating  in  the 
world.  It  presents  problems  never  before 
presented  and  covers  a  scope  paralleled  only 
by  the  laws  of  the  sea.  Very  fortunately, 
however,  aerial  international  law  may  be 
written  at  the  very  start  of  the  science  by  a 
common  international  standard  and  prac- 
tice, thus  obviating  the  greatest  part  of  the 
divergences  which  long  years  of  habit  have 
grafted  into  the  maritime  laws  of  the  various 
nations.  The  slate  is  clean  so  that  uni- 
formity may  be  assured  in  a  law  which  is 
soon  to  come  into  the  most  vital  touch 
with  the  daily  lives  of  the  nations. 

Who,  for  instance,  owns  the  air  above  the 
various  nations?  Obviously  the  individual 
landowner  has  rights,  especially  as  to  freedom 
from  damage.  The  nation  also  has  rights, 
especially  for  its  protection  and  for  police 
work.  How  high,  however,  does  this  juris- 
diction go?  Some  assert  that  a  maximum 
altitude  should  be  set,  say  five  thousand  feet, 

97 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

above  which  the  air  would  be  as  free  as  the 
seas;  others  that  each  nation  must  have 
unqualified  control  to  the  limit  of  the  ether. 

Then  comes  the  question  of  passports, 
customs,  registration,  safety  precautions, 
and  damages.  As  already  shown,  the  man 
on  the  ground  is  helpless  against  the  airplane 
which  chooses  to  defy  him.  People  and 
goods  can  cross  national  lines  by  the  air 
without  passports  or  customs.  There  will 
be  no  main  ports  of  entry  as  in  sea  or  train 
commerce,  and  it  is  too  much  to  think  that 
any  nation  can  patrol  its  whole  aerial  frontier 
in  all  its  various  air  strata.  Undesirable 
immigrants  or  small  precious  freight  can  be 
smuggled  in  with  the  greatest  ease  through 
the  route  of  the  air. 

Obviously  the  most  elaborate  international 
rules  are  necessary.  Planes  must  have  some 
method  of  international  registration  and 
license,  just  as  in  a  more  limited  sense  ships 
on  the  seas  have  what  amounts  to  an  inter- 
national status.  Landing-fields  must  be  es- 
tablished and  open  to  foreign  planes,  each 
nation  providing  some  kind  of  reciprocal 
landing  rights  to  other  nations.  Arrange- 
ments must  be  made  so  that  if  a  monkey- 
wrench  drops  out  of  a  plane  a  mile  or  two 
up  in  the  air  proper  damages  can  be  col- 

98 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

lected.  For  such  things  there  is  to-day  but 
little  precedent  in  law. 

This  but  sketches  the  problems.  It  shows, 
however,  how  closely  this  new  science  will 
bind  the  world  together  and  obliterate 
national  lines  and  nationalistic  feelings.  As 
the  sea  has  been  the  great  civilizer  of  the 
past,  so  the  air  will  be  the  great  civilizer  of 
the  future.  Through  it  men  will  be  brought 
most  intimately  in  touch  with  one  another 
and  forced  to  learn  to  live  together  as  they 
have  not  been  forced  to  live  together  before. 
The  artificial  barriers  that  have  stood  so 
firm  between  nations  in  the  past  are  now 
swept  away  and  a  great  common  medium 
of  intercommunication  opened. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  all  this  will 
take  place  overnight.  Far  from  it,  for  the 
experience  of  the  war  has  taught  only  too 
well  that  the  organization  of  an  air  force 
takes  time  and  patience.  Up  to  date  the 
essential  fact  is  that  the  science,  the  value, 
and  the  possibilities  of  flight  have  been 
proved  in  a  thousand  different  ways.  Vistas 
of  travel  and  experience  have  been  opened 
up  which  but  a  few  months  ago  would 
have  seemed  fanciful.  Everywhere  men  are 
dreaming  dreams  of  the  future  which  chal- 
lenge one's  deepest  imagination.  Already 

8  99 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

Caproni,  the  great  Italian  inventor,  has 
signed  a  contract  to  carry  mails  from  Genoa 
to  Rio  Janeiro. 

Now  comes  news  of  an  airplane  with  room 
for  ninety-two  passengers.  Engine  power 
and  wing  space  have  gone  on  increasing  in  a 
dazzling  way  till  one  is  almost  afraid  to 
guess  what  the  future  may  hold.  But, 
omitting  all  prophecy,  the  actual  accom- 
plishments to  date  are  so  stupendous  that 
there  is  no  need  to  speculate  as  to  the  future. 
If  all  technical  development  were  to  stop 
just  where  it  stands,  the  factories  and  work- 
shops of  the  world  could  well  be  occupied 
for  years  in  turning  out  the  machines  neces- 
sary for  the  work  awaiting  them.  Scientific 
development  has  gone  so  infinitely  far  ahead 
of  actual  production  that  as  yet  aviation  is 
not  being  put  to  a  fraction  of  its  use. 

Even  more  serious,  however,  is  the  general 
public  failure  to  realize  the  gift  which  is 
within  their  reach.  Flying  was  first  a  circus 
stunt  and  later  a  war  wonder.  The  solid 
practical  accomplishments  have  been  lost 
sight  of  in  the  weird  or  the  spectacular. 
People  who  marveled  when  a  British  plane 
climbed  up  nearly  six  miles  into  the  air, 
or  30,000  feet,  where  its  engine  refused  to 

run  and  its  observer  fainted,  failed  generally 
100 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

to  analyze  what  the  invasion  of  this  new  ele- 
ment would  mean  in  the  future  of  mankind. 

What  is  now  needed  is  a  big,  broad  imagi- 
nation to  seize  hold  of  this  new  thing  and 
galvanize  it  into  actual  every-day  use. 
There  are  many  skeptics,  of  course,  many 
who  point  out,  for  instance,  that  the  element 
of  cost  is  prohibitive.  This  is  both  fallacious 
in  reasoning  and  untrue  in  fact.  A  modern 
two-seated  airplane,  even  to-day,  costs  not 
over  $5,000,  or  about  the  price  of  a  good 
automobile.  Very  soon,  with  manufacturing 
costs  standardized  and  the  elements  of  new- 
ness worn  off,  this  price  will  fall  as  sharply 
as  it  has  already  fallen  during  the  war. 

But  what,  after  all,  is  cost  in  comparison 
with  time?  Modern  civilization  will  pay 
dearly  for  any  invention  which  will  increase 
ever  so  little  its  hours  of  effectiveness.  The 
great  German  liners  before  the  war  lavished 
money  without  stint  to  save  a  day  or  two 
in  crossing  the  Atlantic.  The  limited  ex- 
press trains  between  New  York,  Boston, 
Washington,  and  Chicago  have  for  years 
made  money  by  carrying  busy  men  a  few 
hours  more  quickly  to  their  destination. 
What  will  not  be  paid  if  these  times  of  travel 
can  be  reduced  practically  to  half? 

The  element  of  danger  has  been  reduced 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

to  a  minimum  and  will  be  still  more  reduced 
as  emphasis  is  laid  on  safety  rather  than  war- 
time agility.  Many  men,  of  course,  will 
meet  their  death  in  the  air,  just  as  in  the 
early  days  many  men  met  their  death  in 
ships  and  in  railroad  trains,  but  this  will 
not  be  a  deterrent  if  the  goal  is  worth  attain- 
ing. There  will  be  accidents  in  learning  to 
fly,  there  will  be  accidents  of  foolhardiness 
and  of  collision  or  in  landing,  but  they  will 
decrease  to  the  vanishing-point  as  experience 
grows.  Already  the  air  routes  which  have 
been  established  have  a  high  record  of  suc- 
cess and  freedom  from  fatalities. 

The  great  need  of  aviation  to-day  is  faith 
— faith  among  the  people,  among  the  manu- 
facturers, among  the  men  who  will  give  it 
its  being.  Its  success  is  as  inevitable  as  that 
day  follows  night,  but  the  question  of  when 
that  success  is  attained,  now  or  generations 
from  now,  is  dependent  on  the  vision  which 
men  put  into  it.  If  they  are  apathetic  and 
unreasonable,  if  they  chafe  at  details  or 
expect  too  much,  it  will  be  held  back.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  they  go  to  meet  it  with 
confidence,  with  coolness,  and  with  a  realiza- 
tion both  of  its  difficulties  and  its  potentiali- 
ties, its  success  will  be  immediate. 

The  task  is  one  of  the  greatest,  the  most 

102 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

vital,  and  the  most  promising  which  man- 
kind has  ever  faced.  With  the  general 
theories  proved  and  demonstrated,  the  great 
crisis  of  invention  has  passed,  and  the  slow, 
unspectacular  process  of  development  and 
application  has  set  in.  Now  has  come  the 
time  for  serious,  sober  thought,  for  careful, 
analytical  planning,  for  vision  combined  with 
hopefulness.  It  is  well  in  these  early  days, 
when  flight  is  with  the  general  public  a  very 
special  and  occasional  event,  to  remember 
what  has  happened  since  Watt  developed  the 
steam-engine  only  a  few  generations  ago, 
when  Columbus  set  the  first  ship  westward, 
or  when  America's  first  train  ran  over  its 
rough  tracks  near  the  Quincy  quarries. 

The  development  of  aviation  will  be 
world-wide  and  will  include  all  sorts  and 
races  of  men.  The  nations  all  start  pretty 
much  abreast.  Those  which  developed  war 
air  services  have  an  advantage  in  material 
and  experience,  but  this  is  a  matter  only 
for  the  moment.  The  main  lines  of  progress 
are  now  pretty  widely  known  and  the  field 
is  wide  open  to  those  who  have  the  imagina- 
tion to  enter  it.  There  is  practically  no 
handicap  at  this  early  stage  which  cannot 
be  overcome  with  ease. 

There  is,  of  course,  an  element  of  individ- 

103 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

ual  gamble  to  those  who  enter  this  com- 
petition. Undoubtedly  there  will  be  many 
failures,  as  in  all  new  fields;  failures  come  to 
those  who  put  in  capital  as  well  as  those 
who  contribute  their  scientific  knowledge. 
But  by  the  same  token  there  will  be  great 
successes  both  financially  and  scientifically. 
The  prize  that  is  being  striven  for  is  one  of 
the  richest  that  have  ever  been  offered  and 
the  rewards  will  be  in  accordance.  This 
has  been  the  case  at  the  birth  of  every  great 
development  in  human  progress  and  will 
undoubtedly  be  the  case  with  the  science 
of  flight.  Until  a  field  becomes  standardized 
it  offers  extremes  on  both  sides  rather  than  a 
dull,  dreary,  but  safe  average. 

As  aviation  runs  into  every  phase  of 
activity  it  will  require  every  kind  of  man — 
manufacturer,  scientist,  mechanic,  and  flier. 
It  offers  problems  more  interesting  and  more 
complex  than  almost  any  others  in  the 
world.  The  field  is  new  and  virgin,  the 
demand  world-wide,  and  the  rewards  great. 
For  the  flier  there  is  all  the  joy  of  life  in  the 
air,  above  the  chains  of  the  earth,  reaching 
out  to  new,  unvisited  regions,  free  to  come 
and  go  for  almost  any  distance  at  any  level 
desired,  a  freedom  unparalleled.  For  the 
manufacturer  there  is  all  the  lure  of  a  new 

104 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  SKIES 

product  destined  in  a  short  time  to  be  used 
as  freely  as  the  automobile  of  to-day;  for 
the  scientist  there  are  problems  of  balance, 
meteorology,  air  pressure,  engine  power, 
wing  spread,  altitude  effects,  and  the  like 
in  a  bewildering  variety;  for  the  explorer, 
the  geographer,  the  map-maker  a  wholly 
new  field  is  laid  open. 

The  best  men  of  every  type  are  needed 
to  give  aviation  its  full  fruition.  In  Europe 
this  is  realized  to  a  supreme  degree.  Eng- 
land especially,  and  also  France  and  Italy, 
have  put  their  best  genius  at  work  to  fulfil 
the  conquest  of  the  air.  Their  progress  is 
astonishing  and  should  be  a  challenge  to 
the  New  World.  After  the  natural  hiatus 
which  followed  the  armistice  the  leading 
men  have  set  to  work  with  redoubled  vigor 
to  take  first  place  in  the  air. 

In  twenty  years'  time  our  life  of  to-day 
will  seem  centuries  old,  just  as  to-day  it  is 
hard  to  realize  that  the  automobnVand  motor- 
truck do  not  date  back  much  over  a  genera- 
tion. No  change  that  has  ever  come  in 
man's  history  will  be  so  great  as  the  change 
which  takes  him  up  off  the  ground  and  into 
the  air.  This  swift  and  dazzling  era  that 
is  so  close  upon  us  is  hardly  suspected  by 
the  great  mass  of  people.  The  world  will 

105 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

be  both  new  and  better  for  it.  Less  than  the 
train  or  the  motor-car  will  the  airplane  dis- 
turb its  features.  On  the  blue  above  white 
wings  will  glitter  for  a  moment,  a  murmuring 
as  of  bees  will  be  heard,  and  the  traveler 
will  be  gone,  the  world  unstained  and  pure. 
Meanwhile  high  in  the  clouds,  perhaps  lost 
to  view  of  the  earth,  men  will  be  speeding 
on  at  an  unparalleled  rate,  guiding  their 
course  by  the  wireless  which  alone  gives 
them  connection  with  the  world  below. 

Has  there  ever  in  all  history  been  an  appeal 
such  as  this? 


ADDENDUM 

A    PAGE    IN    THE    DICTIONARY    FOR    AVIATORS 

WHAT  is  to  become  of  all  the  new  words, 
some  of  them  with  new  meanings, 
the  old  words  with  new  meanings,  and  the 
new  words  with  old  meanings,  coined  by  the 
aviators  of  the  American  and  British  flying 
services  in  the  war?  Are  they  to  die  an 
early  death  from  lack  of  nourishment  and 
lack  of  use,  or  will  they  go  forward,  full- 
throated  into  the  dictionary,  where  they 
may  belong?  Here  are  just  a  few  of  them, 
making  a  blushing  debut,  so  that  it  may  be 
seen  at  once  just  how  bad  they  are: 

AEROBATICS — A  newly  coined  word  to  describe 
aerial  "stunting,"  which  includes  all  forms  of 
the  sport  of  looping,  spinning,  and  rolling.  The 
term  originated  in  the  training  schedule  for 
pilots,  and  all  pilots  must  take  a  course  in 
aerobatics  before  being  fully  qualified. 

AEROFOIL — Any  plane  surface  of  an  airplane 
designed  to  obtain  reaction  on  its  surfaces  from 
the  air  through  which  it  moves.  This  includes 
107 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

all  wing  surface  and  most  of  the  tail-plane 
surface. 

AILERON — This  is  a  movable  plane,  attached  to 
the  outer  extremities  of  an  airplane  wing.  The 
wing  may  be  either  raised  or  lowered  by  moving 
the  ailerons.  Raising  the  right  wing,  by  de- 
pressing the  right  aileron,  correspondingly 
lowers  the  left  wing  by  raising  the  left  aileron. 
They  exercise  lateral  control  of  a  machine. 

BLIMP — A  non-rigid  dirigible  balloon.  The  dirig- 
ible holds  its  shape  due  to  the  fact  that  its  gas 
is  pumped  into  the  envelop  to  a  pressure  greater 
than  the  atmosphere.  It  can  move  through 
the  air  at  forty  miles  an  hour,  but  high  speed 
will  cause  it  to  buckle  in  the  nose. 

BUMP — A  rising  or  falling  column  of  air  which 
may  be  met  while  flying.  A  machine  will  be 
bumped  up  or  bumped  down  on  a  bumpy  day. 
A  hot  day  over  flat  country,  at  noon,  will 
generally  be  exceedingly  bumpy. 

CRASH — Any  airplane  accident.  It  may  be  a 
complete  wreck  or  the  plane  may  only  be 
slightly  injured  by  a  careless  landing.  Crashes 

•  are  often  classified  by  the  extent  of  damage. 
A  class  A  crash,  for  instance,  is  a  complete 
washout.  A  class  D  crash  is  an  undercarriage 
and  propeller  broken. 

DOPE — A  varnish-like  liquid  applied  to  the  linen 

or  cotton  wing  fabrics.     It  is  made  chiefly  of 

acetone,   and  shrinks  the  fabric  around  the 

wooden   wing   structure   until   it   becomes   as 

108 


ADDENDUM 

tight  as  a  drum.  The  highly  polished  surface 
lessens  friction  of  the  plane  through  the  air. 

DRIFT — Head  resistance  encountered  by  the 
machine  moving  through  the  air.  This  must 
be  overcome  by  the  power  of  the  engine.  The 
term  is  also  used  in  aerial  navigation  in  its 
ordinary  sense,  and  a  machine  flying  a  long 
stretch  over  water  may  drift  off  the  course,  due 
to  winds  of  which  the  pilot  has  no  knowledge. 

DUD — A  condition  of  being  without  life  or 
energy.  An  engine  may  be  dud ;  a  day  may  be 
dud  for  flying.  A  shell  which  will  not  explode 
is  a  dud.  A  pilot  may  be  a  dud,  without  skill. 
It  is  almost  a  synonym  for  washout. 

FLATTEN  OUT — To  come  out  of  a  gliding  angle 
into  a  horizontal  glide  a  few  feet  from  the 
ground  before  making  a  landing.  The  ma- 
chine loses  flying  speed  on  a  flat  glide,  and 
settles  to  the  ground. 

FLYING  SPEED — Speed  of  a  plane  fast  enough  to 
create  lift  with  its  wing  surfaces.  This  varies 
with  the  type  of  plane  from  forty-five  miles 
an  hour  as  a  minimum  to  the  faster  scout 
machines  which  require  seventy  miles  an  hour 
to  carry  them  through  the  air.  When  a  ma- 
chine loses  flying  speed,  due  to  stalling,  it  is  in  a 
dangerous  situation,  and  flying  speed  must  be 
recovered  by  gliding,  or  the  machine  will  fall 
into  a  spin  and  crash  out  of  control. 

FORCED  LANDING — Any  landing  for  reasons  be- 
yond the  control  of  a  pilot  is  known  as  a  forced 
109 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

landing.  Engine  failure  is  chiefly  responsible. 
Once  the  machine  loses  its  power  it  must  go 
into  a  glide  to  maintain  its  stability,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  glide  it  must  land  on  water,  trees, 
fields,  or  roofs  of  houses  in  towns. 

FUSELAGE — This  word,  meaning  the  body  of  a 
machine,  came  over  from  the  French.  The 
cockpits,  controls,  and  gasolene-tanks  are 
usually  carried  in  the  fuselage. 

HOP — Any  flight  in  an  airplane  or  seaplane  is  a 
hop.  A  hop  may  last  five  minutes  or  fifteen 
hours. 

JOY-STICK — The  control-stick  of  an  airplane  was 
invented  by  a  man  named  Joyce,  and  for  a 
while  it  was  spoken  of  as  the  Joyce-stick,  later 
being  shortened  to  the  present  form.  It 
operates  the  ailerons  and  elevators. 

LANDFALL — A  sight  of  land  by  a  seaplane  or 
dirigible  which  has  been  flying  over  an  ocean 
course.  An  aviator  who  has  been  regulating 
his  flight  by  instruments  will  check  up  his 
navigation  on  the  first  landfall. 

PANCAKE — An  extremely  slow  landing  is  known 
as  a  pancake  landing.  The  machine  almost 
comes  to  a  stop  about  ten  feet  off  the  ground, 
and  with  the  loss  of  her  speed  drops  flat.  There 
is  little  forward  motion,  and  this  kind  of  land- 
ing is  used  in  coming  down  in  plowed  fields 
or  standing  grain.  Jules  Vedrines  made  his 
landing  on  the  roof  of  the  Galeries  Lafayette  in 
Paris  by  "pancaking." 
110 


ADDENDUM 

SIDE-SLIP — The  side  movement  of  a  plane  as  it 
goes  forward.  On  an  improperly  made  turn  a 
machine  may  side-slip  out — that  is,  in  the  di- 
rection of  its  previous  motion,  like  skidding. 
It  may  side-slip  in,  toward  the  center  of  the 
turn,  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  turned  too 
steeply  for  the  degree  of  the  turn.  Side-slipping 
on  a  straight  glide  is  a  convenient  method  of 
losing  height  before  a  landing. 

STALL — A  machine  which  has  lost  its  flying  speed 
has  stalled.  This  does  not  mean  that  its  engine 
has  stopped,  but  in  the  flying  sense  of  the  word 
means  that  friction  of  the  wing  surfaces  has 
overcome  the  power  of  the  engine  to  drive 
the  machine  through  the  air.  The  only  way 
out  of  a  stall  is  to  regain  speed  by  nosing  down. 
A  machine  which  has  lost  its  engine  power  will 
not  stall  if  put  into  a  glide,  and  it  may  be 
brought  to  a  safe  landing  with  care. 

STRUT — The  upright  braces  between  the  upper 
and  lower  wings  of  a  machine  are  called  struts. 
They  take  the  compression  of  the  truss  frame 
of  the  biplane  or  triplane.  Each  wing  is 
divided  into  truss  sections  with  struts. 

S-TURN — A  gliding  turn,  made  without  the  use 
of  engine  power.  A  machine  forced  to  seek  a 
landing  will  do  a  number  of  S-turns  to  maneu- 
ver itself  into  a  good  field. 

TAIL  SPIN — This  is  the  most  dreaded  of  all  air- 
plane accidents,  and  the  most  likely  to  be  fatal. 
A  machine  out  of  control,  due  often  to  stalling 
111 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  AVIATION 

and  falling  through  the  air,  spins  slowly  as  it 
drops  nose  first  toward  the  ground.  This  is 
caused  by  the  locking  of  the  rudder  and  elevator 
into  a  spin-pocket  on  the  tail,  which  is  off 
center,  and  which  receives  the  rush  of  air.  The 
air  passing  through  it  gives  it  a  twisting  mo- 
tion, and  the  machine  makes  about  one 
complete  turn  in  two  or  three  hundred  feet  of 
fall,  depending  upon  how  tight  the  spin  may 
be.  The  British  speak  of  the  spin  as  the  spin- 
ning nose  dive. 

TAKE-OFF — This  is  the  start  of  the  machine  in 
its  flight.  After  a  short  run  over  the  ground 
the  speed  of  the  machine  will  create  enough 
lift  so  that  the  plane  leaves  the  ground. 

TAXI — To  move  an  airplane  or  seaplane  on  land 
or  water  under  its  own  power  when  picking 
out  a  starting-place,  or  coming  in  after  a  land- 
ing. This  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  run 
for  a  start  when  the  plane  is  getting  up  speed 
to  fly,  using  all  her  power.  The  NC-4  "  taxied  " 
a  hundred  miles  to  Chatham  after  a  forced 
landing,  and  the  NC-3  came  in  two  hundred 
and  five  miles  to  Ponta  Delgada  after  she  landed 
at  sea. 

VERTICAL  BANK — In  this  position  the  machine 
is  making  a  turn  with  one  wing  pointing 
directly  to  the  ground,  and  its  lateral  axis  has 
become  vertical.  The  machine  turns  very 
quickly  in  a  short  space  of  air,  and  the  ma- 
neuver is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  a  splitting 
113 


ADDENDUM 

vertical  bank.  In  a  vertical  bank  the  elevators 
of  a  machine  act  as  the  rudder  and  the  rudder 
as  an  elevator.  The  controls  are  reversed. 

WASHOUT — Means  anything  which  was  but  is 
not  now — anything  useless,  anything  that  has 
lost  its  usefulness,  anything  that  never  was 
useful.  Flying  may  be  washed  out;  that  is, 
stopped;  a  day  may  be  a  washout,  a  vacation; 
a  machine  may  be  a  washout)  wrecked  beyond 
repair;  a  pilot  may  be  a  washout,  useless  as 
a  pilot.  It  has  a  variety  of  meanings,  and 
each  one  is  obvious  in  its  connection.  The 
term  became  familiar  to  American  fliers  with 
the  Royal  Air  Force. 

ZOOM — To  gain  supernormal  flying  speed  and 
then  pull  the  machine  up  into  the  air  at  high 
speed.  The  rush  of  wind  will  zo-o-om  in  the 
ears  of  the  pilot.  It  is  a  sport  in  the  country 
to  zoom  on  farmers,  on  houses  and  barns, 
nosing  directly  for  the  object  on  the  ground 
and  pulling  up  just  in  time  to  clear  it  with  the 
undercarriage. 


THE    END 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


MAR  29  1934 


MAR  30  1934 


NOV 


DEC  31 1941 


ME 


_JN_STAC1  5 


LD  21-100m-7,'i 


VD       I  rr*>  » 

TD    I  Do i 


435J75 

TL 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


